


1 Peter 4:12

by ceterisparibus



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Acid Rain - Freeform, Angst, Blood Loss, Broken Bones, Claire Temple Deserves Every Good Thing, Concussions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Excessive use of italics, F/M, Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Poisoning, Seizures, So much angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Whump, at least references to them, discussion of suicide, obviously, shameless excuse for whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:15:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 67,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22920856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceterisparibus/pseuds/ceterisparibus
Summary: 1 Peter 4:12 ~ "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you."We all know New York is a prime target for alien attacks, and this time it's some kind of acid rain that causes everyone exposed to it to relive every physical injury they've ever experienced.Guess who gets caught out in the storm. Just take a wild guess.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Claire Temple
Comments: 480
Kudos: 271





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Must all stories have plot? Is it not enough for Matt to simply suffer, as dramatically as possible?

Foggy

Everyone was supposed to stay inside, and everyone knew it. There was a city-wide warning lighting up everyone’s phones, tablets, laptops, whatever, saying that the alien rain that had already poured down on Rhode Island was coming their direction—fast.

You read that right. Alien rain.

Foggy was only kind of surprised after The Incident. There had to reach a point where alien attacks just became…inconvenient, right?

Well, this one was definitely more than just inconvenient for the victims in Rhode Island. Those who’d gotten caught in it were apparently pretty miserable.

“Mysterious, unnatural rain-like substance falling from the sky,” reporters warned. “Stark Tower warns that the substance is extraterrestrial. The full extent of the effects unknown, but we understand that it reactivates previous physical injuries within an hour of exposure. Stay indoors.”

 _Reactivates previous physical injuries_ supposedly meant that, like, if you broke your arm when you were twelve, the arm would re-break if the rain touched it. Sounded awful. But only if the rain touched you.

So yeah. Foggy felt bad for the Rhode Island victims, but he wasn’t too worried for himself, huddled in his apartment. He was, however, bored. He was all alone because Marci was out of the state getting depositions, so he turned on Netflix and got halfway through _New Girl_ (guilty pleasure) when the power cut off.

Foggy wasn’t scared. He _wasn’t_. He was just surprised, and that was why the hair stood up on the back of his neck.

About three seconds later, the tapping began. His head snapped towards the window where he saw a sheen of green-tinted droplets. The rain was light, pattering against the class like an ominous hand asking politely if it could come in.

Foggy swallowed and reached for his phone, hoping to video chat Karen or something just to distract himself from the creepiness of it all before he realized that the internet had gone out along with the power. Fantabulous.

It was _fine_. He could entertain himself for the hour or so it’d take the rain to pass. He could…read a book, or something. Never mind that he hadn’t read a paper-bound book since his first semester of law school. (He’d read, like, half of his torts textbook because that was actually kind of semi-interesting. Got a good ten pages into civil procedure before quitting. Hadn’t even bothered to buy his contracts book, knew from the beginning how boring that would be.) (And he’d _still_ graduated cum laude. Just with better priorities than Matt ever had.) Or he could…build a house of cards. Something. Anything.

Foggy Nelson did not do well with boredom.

He was giving the house of cards idea some serious thought when his phone lit up, the noise and bright light of the screen so sudden that Foggy jumped. Not that anyone was around to witness it. Grabbing his phone, he squinted at the screen. His heart dropped into his stomach.

 _Hottie McBurner Phone_ flashed across.

He gulped. “Hi, Claire?”

He shouldn’t have complained about being bored, even internally. Boredom was good. Boredom was _safe_.

“I’m gonna need an extra pair of hands tonight,” Claire said, no-nonsense.

“Uh…at the hospital?”

“With _Matt_ ,” she snapped, like that was obvious.

It probably should’ve been. Except… “Matt wouldn’t go out in this!”

“Then tell me why he just called me, begging for forgiveness and telling me he thinks he can manage the first two decades of injuries on his own but isn’t sure he’ll be able to handle the rest of it.”

Foggy’s heart fell out of his stomach and into his toes.

“The rain should let up in about five minutes,” Claire went on, voice sharp enough that Foggy knew she had to be seriously worried underneath, “so it’ll be safe for us to get to his place. If you have a first aid kit, bring it.”

Foggy’s first aid kit would barely help a papercut, but he grabbed it anyway. He also pulled on shoes and a jacket and a giant hat because if there was one thing he knew, it was that he did _not_ trust Matt to accurately predict which of his injuries he’d be able to handle. “I’m going there now,” he announced—out loud, on the phone, because he needed to hear himself say it or else he’d probably chicken out.

“What?” Claire squawked. “Foggy—”

He hung up on her. Which was really rude of someone trying to save his best friend’s life. But she was just gonna tell Foggy not to go out and risk getting hit with the rain, even though that was the _last thing_ Foggy was worried about right now because the worst injuries Foggy had ever experienced were like getting scratched by a kitten compared to what Matt was about to be going through.

And Foggy didn’t want him to be alone for a single second of it.

Matt; a few minutes earlier

He shouldn’t’ve gone outside. He knew that, everyone knew that. But in all the chaos following the news from Rhode Island, people had gotten hurt and stuck and the fire department couldn’t get to everyone, not before the rain started.

It was a tiny old lady, taking shelter under a sagging awning the size of a small picnic blanket. The store behind her was locked shut. She wouldn’t last long, clutching her handbag to her chest and shivering from the icy wind that both preceded the rain and would end up blowing it right under her shelter, right against her skin.

Matt didn’t know what injuries she might’ve sustained through her life, but he was very sure that she wouldn’t be able to handle reliving them.

So he’d grabbed his mask and raced outside. He could _taste_ the rain, the tang of ozone and some kind of unfamiliar musk that screamed _danger_. Ignoring the way his instincts shrieked at him to get somewhere safe, he ran three blocks through the obstacle course of the abandoned city, dodging cars that’d rolled up onto the sidewalk when people swerved to avoid crashing into each other until he reached her.

She seemed more scared of him than of the oncoming rain.

“Hey,” he panted. “It’s all right. I’m here to help you.”

She shrank away from him like he was a specter (or maybe actually an alien, maybe that was the problem) and held out her purse with shaky hands like she thought he’d be satisfied if he could steal it.

“Let me help you,” Matt reiterated firmly. “How close are you to somewhere safe?” Maybe he could carry her, maybe, if he could convince her he wasn’t a threat.

She hesitated. Gave a tiny shake of her head.

Great. He thought fast. He could tell from here that the door was too heavy to be kicked down. Maybe he could break a window so she could at least get four walls around her. He took a slow step closer, ignoring how she stiffened in fear. The wind whipped at the trails of his mask. “Listen, I just need—”

Lightning cracked overhead, electricity arcing through the sky. Matt tensed and clenched his fists to keep from putting them over his ears. “Could you just move a little to the—”

Thunder boomed.

He heard the rain falling in the distance.

They were out of time. He stepped forward, ignoring her startled cry, and jabbed his elbow at the window. Glass shattered, slicing easily through Matt’s sleeve and leaving a jagged hole. He probably wouldn’t be able to get her through without hurting her, but that would be better than—

He spun around at the tingle of electricity. The rain was louder, rushing closer. Moving faster than he’d thought, carried by the wind that’d suddenly picked up its pace. It was lashing at the buildings right across the street, it was streaming down onto the cars, it was almost on top of them.

Matt grabbed the woman and pulled her to the ground, twisting to cover as much of her as he could with his own body. She was so small, heart beating fast and loud in his ears, bleeding from where the frail skin on her hands had scraped against the ground.

Matt closed his eyes as the wind drove the rain under the awning, and flinched at its cold touch on the back of his neck. Droplets slid down under his shirt.

This was not gonna feel great.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, this is set after Season 3. Because more whump.

Matt

The rain blew past in only a few minutes, although it felt like an hour. As soon as it was gone, he got up, making every effort to keep any of the rain now soaking his clothes from dripping onto the woman. Except for some cuts and bruises from when he’d unceremoniously knocked her over, she was uninjured. More importantly, she was untouched by the rain. Matt breathed a silent prayer of thanks, brushed off _her_ stammering words of thanks, and took off at a dead sprint back towards his apartment.

How much time did he have?

Bursting in through his roof access, he tripped down the stairs, yanking off his mask and shedding layers as he stumbled into his bathroom. No clue if a shower would actually mitigate anything, but he had to try.

After a minute in the shower, the room inexplicably tilted. No, that would be Matt’s senses spazzing out. Leaning his forehead against the cool wall, he closed his eyes and practiced breathing deeply (hot steam and the neutral scent of his shampoo) for a few seconds. No pain yet, no other effects. He was fine. And the rain was moving fast; it would probably be gone soon, which meant it wouldn’t be too selfish to call Claire, right?

(It was selfish, it was definitely selfish, because the hospitals were gonna be swamped and he was calling her away to be his own private nurse, and he felt sick to his stomach about it, but he called her anyway.)

(He told himself it was because she’d be pissed at him if he didn’t.)

(Really, he just wanted her close.)

After he’d changed into his softest sweatpants and hoodie, he went to sit on the couch. And waited. Either for Claire to arrive or to start feeling the effects, whichever came first. His fingers drummed on the side of the couch and his knee jiggled involuntarily, and he didn’t bother to try to stop even once he noticed what he was doing.

Suddenly, he heard heavy footsteps and labored breathing coming up the stairs, accompanied by a whiff of takeout and a hint of the rain’s acidic scent. Matt jolted to his feet.

Foggy.

Matt heard the scrape of Foggy’s spare key and then Foggy came crashing through into the apartment, flushed and out of breath.

“Matt!” he yelled.

Matt blinked at the noise and the smell of Foggy’s fear. “Right here, buddy. What’re you—”

“What were you _thinking?_ ” Foggy stormed up to him. “Going out in that! Are you _insane?_ ”

Oh. “Let’s not do this right—”

“Do you have any idea what this’ll _do_ to you?”

Matt opened his mouth to point out that he’d already called Claire, but then he stopped. Foggy didn’t just smell like the rain because he’d walked outside after it passed when the air still smelled like its vapors. Foggy smelled like rain because it was still _dripping from his hair and his sleeves_. “Fogs!” Matt reached for his jacket to tug it off. “You’re _soaked,_ what’d you—”

Foggy pushed at Matt’s hands. “I’m not soaked, and I’m not _nearly_ done yelling at you.”

“You went out in it!” Matt was stronger; he ripped off the jacket and threw it away from them like it would explode. “You need a hospital!”

“Oh, _I_ need a hospital?” Foggy’s voice sharpened, a wicked tone that always came out when he was cross-examining a witness into a corner. “Because, what, I got a broken arm when I was thirteen and naively thought I’d be good at soccer? If _I_ need a hospital, what does that say about _you_?”

Matt had a very smart retort prepared about how no one would find Foggy’s one or two injuries suspicious compared to Matt’s laundry list of bodily harm, but his brain was too stuck on the fact that Foggy had once had a broken arm and now it was, according to reports, gonna happen _again_.

Foggy apparently took Matt’s silence as victory, because he started steering Matt backwards towards the couch. “If you won’t go to a hospital, at least let me be here so I can help. Moral support or whatever. I’ll even let you hold my hand if it gets really bad, which I know you won’t do with Claire because, firstly, she’ll be trying to save your life, and secondly, you don’t want her to know you’re freaking out even though I gotta say that’s really unhealthy, and finally, you’d probably break her fingers or something. But don’t worry, I have very masculine fingers that I’m pretty sure you couldn’t break except maybe if you were actively trying.”

He was rambling. He was nervous.

And rather than dwelling on the guilt for the fact that Foggy had knowingly and willingly exposed himself to alien rain just so Matt would have a _hand to hold_ , Matt opted for planting his feet in front of the couch and shouting at his best friend. “You’re such an idiot!”

“ _You’re_ an idiot!” Foggy shouted back. “Who goes out in rain like that with a medical record like yours?”

“Someone was in trouble,” Matt growled.

“Yeah, and my friend was in trouble,” Foggy shot back.

Before Matt could come up with a rebuttal to that, the front door opened and closed and Matt caught Claire’s scent, sweet and refreshing. But her steps were harried and her voice was tight with anger as she strode into the living room. “Both of you need to shut up _right now_ before I tranq you.”

Matt and Foggy fell silent, although their breaths came short and frustrated.

She dropped her bag on Matt’s battered coffee table. “You—” She pointed at Foggy. “Shower. Now. Don’t drip on anything. And _you_ —” She pointed at Matt. “Sit down and swear to me that you’ll do _exactly_ what I say tonight, or I _will_ take you to the nearest hospital.”

If she took him to a hospital, and Matt wouldn’t walk out of there a free man. No, the doctors would take one look at his medical history and call the police, and being blind wasn’t so great a cover now that they lived in a world of magic and aliens. They’d figure out who he was. “I swear,” he said quickly, hoping she believed him. He sat on the couch as instructed while Foggy shuffled obediently off to the bathroom, tail between his legs.

Sighing, Claire sat next to him on the edge of the couch, close enough for their thighs to touch. The fight drained out of Matt, and although anxiety buzzed under his skin, he tried to relax. He still cherished these small moments, whenever she willingly brought her body into contact with his not to heal him but just to be near. It’d taken months after Midland Circle and the aftermath of Fisk’s second rise to power for him to get up the courage to apologize for what he’d done to her, how he’d hurt her. And it’d taken months after that for her to accept his apology. A few days later, he’d braved asking her out for drinks. She’d been quiet for so long that he was sure she was about to say no. He still didn’t know why she’d said yes.

“From what I’ve heard,” she began carefully, “the rain’s not designed to kill you. Reports from other hospitals say the injuries heal up on their own.”

“Yeah,” Matt said quietly, rubbing the fingers of his left hand together—where she couldn’t see. “It’s a good strategy if the aliens want to take over the planet but leave enough of the inhabitants alive to keep the place running. Slave labor, probably.”

She shrugged. “That’s up to Thor and them. The thing is, self-healing wounds don’t do us much good if you bleed out or something before the magic healing whatever starts up.”

He still felt that sickly guilt in his stomach—for worrying her, for putting her through this, for pulling her away from the hospital where she was needed, and for Foggy running out into the rain. “Sorry,” he said pathetically.

Sighing again, she leaned her head on his shoulder and didn’t say anything.

Eventually, the shower shut off in Matt’s bathroom and he heard Foggy moving around in the bedroom. From the sound of it, he’d found old sweats and a t-shirt of his that Matt accidentally acquired at some point and never gave back.

(He liked the feel of them.)

“I don’t know what possessed you to risk getting wet,” Claire greeted Foggy flatly when he returned to the living room, “and I don’t wanna know. Just wash your hands and help me get organized over here.”

Matt’s heart beat uneasily in his chest. This anticipation couldn’t possibly be worse than what was coming, but it wasn’t particularly fun either.

While Foggy was helping Claire sort through all the stuff in three different first aid kits, including her overflowing duffel bag, Matt felt a sudden, sharp sting in his knee. Frowning, he leaned forward to brush his hand over the spot. He wasn’t even close to bleeding through his sweatpants, but he could smell a hint of copper in the air. “It’s, uh…I think it’s starting.”

Foggy’s heartrate sped up and he gave an uneasy cough. “Baby Matt’s first skinned knee? That’s kinda cute, right? Can we acknowledge the cuteness here?”

Not dignifying that with a reply, Claire pressed two pills into Matt’s palm. “Take these. I dunno if they’ll actually help, but…” When Matt swallowed, she hummed doubtfully. “Not even a complaint for me, huh? That’s a first.”

He forced a crooked grin her direction. “Do you want me to complain?”

“I plead the fifth, counselor.” Brushing his hair back, she planted a kiss on his forehead. He didn’t expect much more gentleness than that through the course of the night, so he couldn’t help leaning into her touch.

The next hour or so wasn’t too bad. Random cuts and bruises, skinned knees and elbows, a sprained wrist, none of which lasted long. Truth be told, Matt remembered that particular sprained wrist with fondness. He’d stolen his dad’s gloves when he was maybe eight years old and went to town on a makeshift punching bag until he got the angle of the punch wrong and paid for it with stretched ligaments in his wrist.

For the record, Foggy had his share of childhood injuries resurfacing too. Same general cuts and bruises. So yeah, Matt’s weren’t anything abnormal.

Except.

Claire pressed ice to Matt’s wrist until it returned to normal. “Foggy, write this down—something that would’ve taken two days to heal just takes fifteen minutes now, give or take. Let’s see if that stays consistent, yeah?”

Matt heard the words, but he wasn’t really listening, too distracted with what he thought was coming next. And he hadn’t…he hadn’t really thought about this part, too focused on recent things like Nobu’s blades or…or Midland Circle, and he didn’t wanna relieve any of that either, but this…this….

“Buddy?” Foggy asked nervously, approaching the couch.

As soon as he got within Matt’s reach, Matt’s hand shot out, very much on its own, to clutch Fogy’s hand. He closed his eyes.

A second later, he yelled out and hunched over as he felt it: burning in and around his eyes, chemicals searing away his sight. His brain flashed back and he was nine years old again, choking on the acrid smell of the leaking toxins, seeing his dad’s face for the very last time. Pressing his other hand to his eyes, he fought the scream now building in his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments are LIFE, thankyousomuch.


	3. Chapter 3

Claire

 _No real damage,_ she reminded herself, biting her lip and watching. _No real damage._ The chemicals would fade; they wouldn’t kill him, no matter how much pain they caused him. Right? Or did he need her to do something? He’d told her he’d ended up in the hospital as a kid, but that was mostly monitoring while his body healed itself. She might be able to help with…with _stab_ wounds, or something, but this?

Matt clawed at his face with his free hand, and horror sank into her gut at the sight of blisters now splashed around his eyes and over his cheekbones, scars that must’ve long faded from the real injury but were now practically glowing with a luminous, radioactive hue.

“Whoa,” Foggy breathed.

Matt sucked in a breath and held it.

“Hey,” Claire said softly. “Let it out, Matt. it’s okay.”

A few tears leaked under his hand. He shook his head.

It was a tiny bit heartbreaking. Here he was in a safe place with two people who loved him, and would it kill him to just let some walls down? But telling him to let go just so he could stop fighting himself wouldn’t get anywhere with him, and she knew it. Instead, she lightly touched his arm and, when the pain seemed to subside somewhat and his body relaxed (fractionally), put her mouth close to his ear. “Hey,” she murmured. “Just so you know, this’ll be a lot easier for all of us if you’re honest with me about what you’re feeling. Understand?”

He exhaled shakily and didn’t let go of Foggy; he rubbed at his eyes with his other hand, wiping away the tears. His fingers ghosted over the scars again, tracing them, and he tried to turn his face away. Tried to hide.

“Hey.” Lightly catching his chin in her hand, Claire turned his face back to her so she could gently kiss the discolored streaks of skin. “It’s okay.”

His next outward breath was steadier. His hand holding Foggy’s loosened somewhat and his other hand trailed up Claire’s arm to touch her hair. The closest he’d get to thanking her for her tenderness towards him.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay. I’m fine.”

She nodded, hoping he’d perceive her to be more confident than she felt. If she thought that would be the worst of it, that would be one thing. But the terrifying part of all this was that Claire knew from _firsthand experience_ that it would get worse. A lot worse. She needed serious caffeine. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. “All right Matt. Let’s just agree right now that surprises aren’t what we want here, all right? So I need you to tell me, _right now_ , what I can expect from here on out.”

Swallowing, he nodded and slowly sat up straighter. “Uh, yeah. Okay. There was, uh…I think I was eleven when I broke my arm. And, uh, maybe some of my fingers, I don’t remember.”

Foggy’s eyebrows shot up. “You don’t _remember?_ ”

Matt’s eyes were wide, like a little kid who’d accidentally gotten an answer wrong on a quiz. He gave a tiny, helpless shrug.

“Okay,” Claire said crisply, firmly deciding to freak out about that _later_. “We’ll work under the assumption that there were at least two injuries when you were eleven. What kind of break? A compound fracture? That’s when the bone’s sticking out,” she added. She knew for a fact that he’d inflicted compound fractures before, saw enough of the people he took issue with afterwards in the ER, but didn’t know if he knew the name. “Do you remember if the broken bone severed any blood vessels?”

“Not compound, and no broken blood vessels,” he answered, and hurried to move on. “After that, I was good until shortly after Foggy and I—” He broke off, flinching slightly.

Claire narrowed her eyes. “Matt.”

“Sorry, uh, shortly after we left Landman and Zack, that’s when I started—” He flinched again, even though she couldn’t see any signs of new injuries on his body. In fact, the scars around his eyes were beginning to slowly, slowly fade. “That’s when I started going out at night, so there might be some, um, some—” He stiffened and closed his eyes; red bloomed on the side of his face, blood rushing under the skin. “Some bruising and stuff,” he finished in a rush.

Claire grabbed his hand. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he stammered. “Just, I can’t hear it coming, so I can’t, um, can’t really brace for it.”

“For _what?_ ”

He ducked his head, defensive and skittish. “It’s just, uh, the nuns, sometimes—”

“The _nuns?_ ” Foggy exclaimed.

“What nuns?” Claire demanded.

“At the orphanage,” Foggy snarled, “where they were supposed to be _taking care_ of him.”

Orphanage. It—it made sense in hindsight; she knew his dad had passed and she knew his mom had been out of the picture until recently. But she hadn’t put it together, not like this. She pressed her hand to her mouth, biting back all the things she wanted to say that he’d hate to hear.

Matt looked mildly panicked—not over the injuries, no, but over Claire’s horror at this part of his _childhood_. “It’s fine, it’s not—it’s not—I just can’t tell it’s coming, so I can’t—it’s fine. Can we— _ow!_ ” His head snapped violently to the side and he blinked, looking dazed.

Foggy jumped to his feet. “That’s it! I’m calling St. Agnes, I’m calling child services—”

Now Matt looked entirely panicked. “Don’t! It’s fine, it’s fine. That wasn’t them, that was Stick. First head shot, that’s all, no worries.”

Fury lashed through Claire. “They used a _stick?_ ”

“No, no, Stick was my, uh—”

“Abuser,” Foggy muttered under his breath.

Matt, obviously, heard it. “Teacher,” he growled.

Claire was lost. Lost and worried and more than a little angry. “Like at school?”

“No, just…” Matt jerked where he sat, then stood up quickly. “Look it’s—it’s not that bad, it just might _look_ bad, but you don’t have to—I’m just gonna—” He edged toward the bedroom.

“Do _not_ leave my sight,” Claire ordered.

Stopping dead, he glanced back nervously, running a hand through his hair. “Claire,” he pleaded.

Shooting Foggy a warning look to stay where he was, she approached her patient carefully, slowly, wary of spooking him further. “Matt, I need to know what’s happening to you in case you need help.”

“I don’t, I won’t, it’s just—blunt force trauma, just— _oof_ ,” he gasped, pressing his closed fist to his stomach like the wind had been knocked out of him.

Not _just_ blunt force trauma; blunt force trauma leading to several broken bones at least. She put her hand on his shoulder and waited until he’d gotten his breath back to say, “You asked for me to be here. You asked me to help. That’s all I’m trying to do.”

His eyes flicked uncertainly over her face.

The problem was, she wasn’t a psychologist or a therapist. And it was becoming real clear real fast that _that_ was the kind of expertise Matt really needed here. Well, he needed her expertise too, but her expertise wouldn’t do any good if he refused to let her help.

She took a deep breath and tried to sound gentle. “Could you just…tell me why you don’t want me to see this?”

“I don’t care if you see this.” His lip started to bleed; he quickly licked at the blood, and it was such an obvious lie that she wanted to—

No, not slap him, she couldn’t even _think_ that right now, hyperbolic though the expression was. She wanted to bundle him up in a blanket. She wanted to give him pills so he could pass out and sleep through all of this. (But what if something went wrong, something internal, and he wasn’t awake to tell her?) She wanted to heal him and soothe him and kiss him until he forgot every instance of pain he’d ever experienced.

She touched her thumb lightly to his bottom lip, wiping away the blood that remained. “Who was this Stick guy?”

Matt held perfectly still, like the last thing in the world he wanted to do was move away from her touch, but _also_ like the last thing in the world he wanted to do was answer her question.

“He’s Matt’s Mr. Miyagi,” Foggy finally offered from the living room. “Taught him kung-fu or whatever.”

“Right.” Claire kept her thumb on Matt’s lip. “Having seen you in action, I’ve gotta say he must’ve been a pretty good teacher.”

Matt nodded hesitantly.

Claire took a deep breath. “But looking at you right now, I’ve _also_ gotta say he must’ve been pretty rough. How…how old were you again?”

“Does it matter?” he asked quietly.

It didn’t matter for his healing, no, but it might matter for a lot of other reasons. Her mind raced, trying to piece together everything she knew of Matt (and they were…they were _dating_ , or something, not quite labeling it yet, but _something_ , so how was it that she still knew so little about him?) to figure out what he was thinking. He hated expressing weakness—maybe he thought these injuries made him weak? Maybe—maybe they were _punishments_ because this Stick guy thought he’d done something wrong? Because if there was one thing Matt hated more than being weak in general, it was doing something wrong.

“Matt,” she said clearly. “I don’t care why Stick thought he needed to treat you like this—”

“I care,” Foggy murmured from behind her.

“—but you need to let me help you through it.”

Matt opened his mouth to reply. But he didn’t get the chance; instead, he suddenly doubled over with a yelp, bracing one hand against the back of the chair with his other between his legs.

Claire blinked and looked at Foggy, who winced.

Matt was pressing his forehead to the back of the chair now, taking shallow breaths. “Sorry, s-sorry. Stick wanted me to—to know how to handle groin shots, it’s fine, I can—I’m fine.” With obvious effort, he straightened up, face red with embarrassment. “ _Don’t_ say anything,” he shot at Foggy.

Grimacing sympathetically, Foggy mimed zipping his lips.

Claire had no idea what to say. She settled for clearing her throat loudly.

Matt took a few seconds to gather himself before glancing in Claire’s direction. “The—the next thing, I think, is the—the broken arm, so—we should probably, um…”

“Take a seat,” she instructed him, businesslike. According to reports, the break would technically heal, but it might not heal the right way if someone wasn’t there to set it. It depended, apparently, on how severe the break was. While Matt moved towards the couch, limping a tiny bit, she noticed Foggy looking increasingly freaked out.

“At least you get to see me go first,” Matt said dryly.

Claire turned on Foggy. “What, you too?”

“I was thirteen,” Foggy admitted, eyes on Matt. “So we’ve got time. I just wanna know what my future holds.”

Claire bit her lip. “We could always sedate you, since I’m assuming _you_ won’t randomly start bleeding internally. _Will_ you randomly start bleeding internally?”

Foggy hurriedly shook his head. “Nothing else bad happens to me for, like…” His voice turned guilty. “Twenty years.”

If he was gonna start nursing a guilt complex over not being as regularly beat up as Matt, Claire was gonna have a problem with him. “Good,” she said simply. “I’ll knock you out, then.”

Foggy’s eyes were still on Matt. “In a minute,” he said, and went to sit on the couch next to his friend. Matt didn’t verbally thank him, but the death grip Matt had on the arm of the couch loosened slightly.

Claire moved in close. “This’ll hurt,” she said, keeping her voice steady and calm, “but you’re not actually in any danger. Remember that.”

Matt had the audacity to roll his eyes. To be fair, she’d seen way worse from scared patients who didn’t want to admit they were scared. And when she pulled his hand away from the arm of the couch to hold it, he didn’t resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did martial arts for 8 years with my brothers, and they got hit in the groin a lot, which was obviously pretty painful even when they were wearing athletic cups, so...I added that part both in the interest of realism and in honor of my brothers.
> 
> In other news, this is already angstier and involves more psychology than I anticipated.


	4. Chapter 4

Foggy

The _snap_ was a lot louder than he’d expected, or at least it _felt_ louder. Maybe because Foggy was sitting close enough to Matt that Matt’s violent jerk jolted Foggy, maybe because the _snap_ hung in the air for about five full seconds before Matt’s scream tore from his throat.

Claire let out a startled curse in Spanish, like she wasn’t ready, and swooped down before the bone could set the wrong way or something. She placed her hands on either side of Matt’s arm, which Foggy only knew contextually because he was trying not to actually _look_ at the arm. He kinda almost wished he had some actual medical experience, which would at least give him something _helpful_ to focus on. He started counting the bricks making up the wall at the back of Matt’s kitchen, over and over, trying to distract himself.

“Matt,” Claire was saying steadily, “I need your ears, all right? I need an x-ray here. Tell me where to put my right hand.”

Matt’s jaw was clenched so hard Foggy thought it might break. And Foggy was kinda impressed that he was even able to talk at all. “Bit—bit up, more, just—too far, stop, stop. Other hand, more to the left—right there, okay, there.”

“Okay,” Claire said. “Ready, three, two—”

_Snap._

Matt didn’t scream this time. In his position, Foggy would definitely be screaming. Foggy already wanted to scream, because he remembered how bad it’d been when _his_ arm was broken, and here Matt was reliving an injury from when he was _eleven_ , which was inflicted _on purpose_ by the guy Matt was supposed to _trust_. While Matt’s blunt fingernails dug into Foggy’s arm, Foggy distracted himself trying to figure out where he could go to scream so that Matt couldn’t hear him. He’d probably have to go on vacation. Or find, like, a death metal concert.

Digging out a sling from her bag (Foggy was starting to think it was magical, like from Harry Potter), Claire moved Matt’s arm carefully in place, doing a good job acting unaffected by the tiny sounds he failed to bite back. Finally, she sat back, pushing her hair behind her ears. Matt apparently took that as his cue to slump over against Foggy, his sweaty head on Foggy’s shoulder. But he wasn’t actually relaxed and his death grip on Foggy’s wrist did not lessen.

Claire’s dark eyes were tired and anxious. She gave Matt almost ten minutes—during which time Matt slowly released Foggy’s wrist, but didn’t lose any of the tension in his body—before saying, “Here’s what I’m thinking. Once you start being Daredevil, it’s gonna be basically nonstop hurting, right? And it’s…” She checked her watch. “It’s two in the morning already, and we’re all exhausted, and you need to give your body a chance to recover before…before the next round of this. So. I brought some morphine—”

Foggy was willing to bet that _brought_ might be more accurately phrased as _stole_.

Already shaking his head, Matt dragged himself upright. “No. No, I can’t do that.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You need to. I’m serious.”

Matt set his mouth in a thin line.

Claire looked at Matt, then at Foggy, then curled her lip and stuck her hand in her magic bag, pulling out one of those little yellow prescription bottles.

Matt heard the pills rattling and stiffened. When he heard the _click_ of Claire twisting the cap off, he got up—too fast, because he swayed a little and cradled his injured arm closer to his chest—and stalked over to stand by the wall, with his back to the stupid window, which lit up his profile with creepy, undulating lights.

But Claire didn’t let him retreat so easily. She stood up and started towards him.

“Whoa, whoa.” Foggy hurried to put himself between them, before Matt could do something that would hurt him worse or Claire could do something to violate the whole do-no-harm thing she was supposed to have. “All right, everybody, let’s all give ourselves a second, okay?”

Claire ignored him. “You have to take _something_ ,” she told Matt.

“I appreciate what you’re doing here, Claire,” Matt said tightly, barely moving his jaw, “but I disagree.”

Time for Foggy to do what he did best: diffuse and mediate. “I’ve got this, guys, I’ll figure it out. First, I’m gonna need you to talk to _me_ , not each other.” Same principle applied when the prosecution started making petty objections: you were supposed to talk to the judge, not get stuck in a back-and-forth with opposing counsel. “Claire?” he prompted. “Why exactly does Matt need to take super fancy drugs?”

“So his body can rest and recover enough to survive what’s coming in the next hour or so,” she replied immediately.

“Very nice,” Foggy acknowledged. He faced his best friend. “Matt? Can you tell me why exactly you’re opposed to survival?”

Matt rolled his eyes and didn’t answer. Which, fair. Foggy had been kinda hopeful that phrasing it like that would get a laugh, but he probably should’ve known better. When Matt was angry, or, worse, felt cornered, he didn’t tend to find jabs like that very amusing.

Foggy carefully rephrased. “Why don’t you want Claire’s pills, buddy?”

“I can meditate,” Matt said tersely.

“Yeah, and it’s super impressive, but that doesn’t really answer my question, since I’m pretty sure you can meditate even with the pills, right?”

Before Matt could respond, assuming he even wanted to, he flinched and spat blood on the floor. Which, ew, except…Matt’s floor was probably saturated with old blood by this point. Revolting. Foggy was never going barefoot here again. He was buying Matt a fancy rug. He was buying Matt five fancy rugs to swap out every few months or so.

“It’s unnecessary,” Matt said at last.

“You can’t—” Claire started hotly.

Foggy shushed her. “Look, Matt, maybe you’re right, but Claire made a good argument about why those pills are _very_ necessary, and you’re gonna have to overcome that argument with, y’know, actual evidence. And even if you’re _right_ that they’re unnecessary, that still doesn’t answer my question of why you don’t wanna take them, which is what’s actually at issue here.”

Glaring, Matt fidgeted with the hem of his pale gray sweatshirt.

And yeah, Foggy was fully aware that if he tried to pin any other friend down like this, they’d definitely hate him. But Matt was a lawyer and so had tacitly agreed to this kind of logical precision. So Foggy waited patiently.

Matt finally gave a short, sharp exhale. “They mess with my senses.”

Ah. “So lemme make sure I’ve got this straight,” Foggy cut in when Claire opened her mouth. “Claire thinks you should take the pills so you don’t die, and you think you should _not_ take the pills because they’ll make you feel weird. Do I have that right?”

“I won’t die,” Matt said flatly. “I lived through it before.”

“Not in one forty-eight-hour period!” Claire burst out. “Right now is the _one time_ you can pass out without me freaking out that I’ll miss some kind of stab wound or punctured lung or something, would you just work with me here?”

“I won’t—” Matt’s whole body clenched; he thrust his head back like he could get away from whatever ghosts of pain he was experiencing.

Because of course having a broken arm hadn’t been enough to get Stick to back off.

Claire and Foggy both moved closer. The pill bottle rattled in Claire’s hand.

Matt thrust his hand out, eyes closed. “ _Don’t._ You can’t just— _don’t_.”

“I’m trying to help you,” she hissed.

“Not like _that_.”

Claire threw up her hands in frustration. “You called me here to keep you alive!”

“I called you here to be _with_ me,” Matt blurted out.

Foggy blinked.

Claire slowly let the bottle of pills fall back to her side.

“I’m not—I just—” Matt gritted his teeth. “I need your help, Claire. I know that. But I still—” He opened his eyes. “Just give me a break, all right?”

Claire turned to Foggy, desperation written all over her face. _I’m not okay with this,_ she mouthed.

 _Will he really die?_ Foggy mouthed back.

She threw him a disgusted look. _How should I know? We’re talking about alien rain!_

“Guys,” Matt said.

 _He thinks meditation would help,_ Foggy mouthed, and mimed that weird thing people did with their hands.

Claire chewed nervously on her lip.

“Guys,” Matt said, sounding like he was trying not to freak out.

Claire heaved a deep, deep sigh. “ _Fine_ , you win. But you’d better sit on that couch and meditate from right this second until your first stab wound, or so help me I will…” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling like she’d find a good threat up there. “I will get my sterilized hospital smell all over your silk sheets.”

Centimeter by centimeter, Matt’s shoulder seemed to relax. “That actually sounds like an incentive.” He moved past both Foggy and Claire, careful not to brush against either of them, but didn’t go for the couch. Instead, he lowered himself to sit cross-legged between the couch and the chairs, eyes sliding closed.

Claire pursed her lips. “I thought I said couch.”

“Doesn’t work as well,” Matt murmured.

Folding her arms, Claire tapped her foot a few times on the floor, then stuffed the bottle of pills back into her bag and plopped back onto the couch with a huff.

A truce. For now.

Claire

She really didn’t know what to do here. And she was terrified of making a mistake, but the situation felt lose-lose: either she’d damage Matt’s body, or she’d damage Matt’s…heart?

(How could he call her here, with all her training, and then try to _stop_ her from taking care of him? How was that _fair?_ )

The rapid drumming of her fingers against her thigh was probably disruptive to his meditation, but he didn’t comment, so she didn’t stop. She stared across at Foggy, trying to figure out if he was half as scared as she was. If he was, he was doing a good job at hiding it. If he was, she wondered if Matt could tell even though she couldn’t.

Eventually, she noticed a crease appear between Matt’s eyebrows. His skin was paling rapidly. She wanted to ask what was going on with him, but her heart sank as the seconds ticked by and he didn’t offer a word of explanation.

And she could _probably_ dig it out of him if she tried, but she also really wanted him to be honest with her on his own. Especially after the whole morphine thing, just to prove—to her and to himself—that he still trusted her enough to take care of him. So she waited, just a little, and pretended to focus on Foggy ranting. Pretended not to notice the sweat that broke out on Matt’s forehead, the way he licked his lips, the way he held his hand over his stomach.

It didn’t look like anything was bleeding or broken, and maybe that was why he thought he could hide this, whatever it was.

( _Whatever it was_ looked like sickness, but that didn’t make sense—there’d never been any reports of people reliving _sickness_. Just injuries.)

He held out almost five minutes before leveraging himself to his feet, taking forcefully deep breaths through his nose. But he still didn’t ask for help.

He had Foggy’s attention, though. “What’d Stick do this time?”

From the look on Matt’s face, that was completely the wrong thing to say. He didn’t answer, which definitely meant there was nothing truthful he could say that wouldn’t confirm everything Claire and Foggy already suspected of Stick. Swallowing, he started moving purposefully toward the bathroom.

But Claire anticipated him, grabbing a bowl from the kitchen and intercepting him in record time. She didn’t actively block him, though. If he wanted to hide in the bathroom and not tell her what was making him sick…maybe she should let that be his choice? And just because it would be _good_ for him to tell her everything he was going through and let her be with him while it happened didn’t necessarily mean it was fair to ask that of him. Maybe trust went two ways, and she had to trust him to tell her if he really needed her.

(Or maybe she was letting him kill himself on her watch.)

(Maybe she should fight harder to stay close to him, since _being with_ him was apparently what he wanted from her.)

(She just—she had no idea what to do here.)

But she wordlessly held out the bowl and let him decide how to respond.

He hesitated, eyes darting around her face, and, to her surprise, accepted the bowl. To her greater surprise, he started talking, haltingly. “Stick, uh…poisoned me, once. A couple times, actually. To see how I’d handle it, see if I could sense it, avoid it. So the next…the next half hour or so might be…” He took another step towards the bathroom. “I don’t need you for this.”

That stung, a little, but she pretended it didn’t. “I’m here if you change your mind,” she said softly.

He nodded, forced a weak grin, and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door tightly behind him.

She let out a low sigh of relief at their flimsy compromise.


	5. Chapter 5

Matt

Matt paced the tiny bathroom, wishing he’d thought to close his bedroom door so he could sneak into the next room and still have privacy. He needed to stay in motion, because sitting still only made the cramps that much worse.

He’d thrown up twice already and was trying not to think about whether Claire and Foggy would’ve been able to hear the retching. At some point, one of them had turned on music or something, a tinny and obnoxious sound blaring from a phone’s crappy speakers. Still, he couldn’t help appreciating the gesture.

His arm still throbbed in time with his pulse and every once in a while a new bruise would flare up. The ones on his arms weren’t so bad; that meant he’d blocked Stick’s strikes at least semi-successfully. The ones to his head, though, or to his core, could only mean he’d failed.

It was so unfair. He felt jittery; he wanted to climb out of his skin. Or out the window. Foggy was probably used to Matt shutting him out like this by now, but Claire was definitely hurt by his evasiveness. Not to mention confused. It wasn’t like he hadn’t fallen through her window enough times, casually admitting how badly he was hurt so he could flirt with her while she stitched him up.

But those injuries were…they were heroic. He’d gotten them from helping people. Unlike everything from the nuns (which didn’t really count, that was _nothing_ ) and from Stick. He’d gotten each and every one of _those_ injuries because he hadn’t been good enough.

Even now, he was only fighting the urge to throw up again because he’d been too stupid as a kid to smell the poison in the soup Stick gave him after training one day. Or maybe by this point he was really paying for that other time he was poisoned, when he should’ve known Stick hadn’t gotten him another vanilla ice cream cone just to reminisce over when they first met.

(He’d wanted the second ice cream to _mean something_ so badly that he hadn’t even thought to question it.)

The nausea rose up again and he stifled a groan, hoping Claire and Foggy couldn’t hear that, either.

He almost _wished_ they could skip ahead to the part where he was beat up by human traffickers. At least then he wouldn’t feel guilty for making Claire and Foggy be so worried, for making them comfort him.

His watch was somewhere in his bedroom, so he didn’t know how long it was before he finally decided the worst effects of the poisoning were over, although he still had a foul taste in his mouth that toothpaste couldn’t quite cover, and he still felt vaguely sick. And just…kind of drained in general. He set his hand on the doorknob, giving himself one more second to pull himself together. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the living room.

On the couch, Foggy jolted awake with a loud snort.

Claire was hurrying across the room, twisting to avoid one of his chairs. “Better?”

He didn’t want to talk about it. He shrugged.

She moved in close and hovered there, striking a weird balance between cautious and confident. She touched his forehead. “Think you could eat something?”

He made a face. Another invisible strike caught him on the cheek—Stick’s fist, Stick’s foot, whatever, it didn’t matter. He shouldn’t have let Stick get in another headshot, and this nonstop barrage that he couldn’t even fight was really fraying on his nerves.

“You should eat something,” Claire insisted.

“Maybe—” His voice came out scratchy; he tried to clear his throat. “Maybe later.”

“Or at least drink water.”

Even water sounded disgusting right now. He’d rather just concentrate the feel of her skin on his.

She sighed. She sighed around him a lot and he usually deserved it so he wasn’t sure why all of a sudden he found it so grating. “C’mon.” She took his hand and tried to tow him towards the kitchen.

It all seemed so ridiculous that he planted his feet. And of course she couldn’t budge him.

Foggy’s heartrate ticked up.

Keeping hold of Matt’s hand, Claire turned on him. “Matt, don’t be ridiculous.”

He wanted her to stop babying him, which was childish in and of itself, and realizing how childish he was being just made it all worse. But he itched to fight back at _something_ , and there wasn’t really anything he could fight except for her and Foggy. “You can stop coddling me,” he said, voice clipped.

“Telling you to stay hydrated isn’t _coddling!_ ”

“I can take care of myself.”

And Claire _laughed_ at him.

Matt’s empty and abused stomach tightened at the sound.

“Oh, shit,” Foggy breathed.

With one sharp twist, Matt freed his hand from hers. “That’s what you’ve been thinking?”

“No! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Didn’t she, though? Well, there was only one way to find out. “You think I can’t take care of myself?” he challenged. “Say it. Say it, Claire.”

She took an anxious step towards him. “Matt, it’s really late and we’ve all been through a lot, _especially_ you, and none of us even knows what we’re saying. After everything Stick did is over, you’ll have a chance to rest, right? Maybe even sleep for a few hours?”

Matt felt…cold, and humiliated, and turned inside-out. Why would she have even agreed to date him if she found him so pathetic? What was he, a charity case? Her good deed of the month?

He hated— _hated_ —that his choices hurt her. Hated that she had to deal with the fallout of his…martyrdom. (Might as well call it what it was.) Hated that she was asking so little of him (to just care about his own well-being enough that he wouldn’t have to crawl through her window every other night) and he still couldn’t be better for her.

But he’d thought, when she said yes, that she was finally accepting him as he was.

“You should sleep,” he said flatly. “You can have my bed.”

It would smell like her for weeks. He was torturing himself.

(This wasn’t the fight he’d wanted. He needed to fix this, but if she didn’t really want him, what was he supposed to do?)

“Matt,” Claire started to say, but she broke off at a violent shake of Foggy’s head. He probably thought he was being subtle. Lowering her head, Claire walked past Matt, giving him a wide berth so they didn’t touch, and retreated into the bedroom. The heavy door slid shut.

Matt hadn’t realized he’d been standing there, frozen in place, until Foggy got up and bumped straight into him.

“Totally on board with the no-water thing you’ve got going on,” Foggy said, forced cheerfulness that was so obvious it was almost endearing. “You know what beats water, every time? Alcohol. Want me to grab you some?”

Matt wanted to erase the last minute of his life. And a good chunk more than that, if he was being honest. “Yeah,” he said instead. “Thanks.”

Claire

She had no idea how things had spiraled out of control so fast. She’d just been worried about Matt’s health, why were they _fighting?_

Their first fight as a real couple. But also, if she didn’t fix things, maybe their last.

She needed to get a grip. Matt lashing out at her was better than Matt kicking her and Foggy out of the apartment. Or backflipping out a window, which wouldn’t even be a first for him. None of this was about her anyway.

It was just…this was literally her job. Helping people. Healing them. If she couldn’t do this well, what was the point?

She took a deep breath. _Stop being so dramatic. You sound like Matt._

Still, if the situation weren’t what it was, she might've given herself permission to disappear and just cry for a minute or two. But she couldn’t leave Matt alone that long. And even if he really did hate everything she was doing, _she_ knew she was handling it the best way she knew how.

(And what did that say about her, if the best way she knew wasn’t good enough?)

Sitting on the edge of his bed, she closed her eyes. If they made it through the night, maybe she should ask him about meditation, because she could sure use something calming right now. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, both because of her own turbulent thoughts and because Matt was still out there, still hurting.

In fact, it only took about five minutes before she heard Matt’s muffled “ _Ow!_ ” from the next room. She stood up, but didn’t leave the bedroom.

“Cl—” Foggy started to yell, but he was cut off with a grunt. It sounded like Matt had hit him.

Claire chewed on her finger and didn’t move. She heard fierce whispering from the living room, and what sounded like not a small amount of cursing on Foggy’s end.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Foggy hissed finally, and raised his voice again. “Claire!”

Bracing herself, Claire hurried out of the bedroom and blinked at the sight before her. Matt was leaning forward where he sat on the couch, face stony, blood streaming from his nose and sightless eyes watering. He was already pinching at the soft part of his nose to stem the blood.

Claire wasted no time in retrieving tissues from his drawer and ice packs from his freezer. But once she’d handed them to him, she didn’t know what else to do. Matt didn’t need her for this, and they both knew it, even if Foggy didn’t. She didn’t want to banish herself to his bedroom, though. That felt like conceding defeat; she’d rather stay and fight for him—for _them_.

Unless he thought she was just hovering because…because she didn’t think he was capable?

He was _so incredibly_ capable.

Maybe it was about time she told him that. She tried to calm the nervous fluttering of her heart as she said, “Hey, Matt?”

Holding tissues and ice to his nose, he lifted his eyes towards her but didn’t otherwise move from his hunched position.

Foggy, meanwhile, was shooting her a warning look, like he just _knew_ she was gonna make everything worse.

To be fair, she didn’t know she wouldn’t. But she had to try. Wetting her lips, she picked her away across the room to sit next to him on the couch. “Matt, listen.” Then, because that wasn’t good enough, she took a risk and grabbed his hand, breathing a silent prayer of thanks when he didn’t resist. “You’re…you’re strong, and smart, and brave. I _know_ how capable you are. The thing about you not taking care of yourself…if it helps, it’s not that I think you _can’t_. It’s that you just _don’t_.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“And I’m sure you still hate to hear me say that,” she rushed on, “but…I’m sorry, I literally can’t lie to you. If it helps, though, there’s lots of ways I don’t take care of myself, either, all right? It’s just not as obvious with me.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“It’s stupid stuff. Like when I have a twelve hour shift and forget to eat. Or when I fall asleep as soon as I get home from my shift and then can’t sleep at night until like three in the morning. Or…” She took a deep breath. “Or when I don’t sleep at all because I’m worrying about you, which is stupid because I know you’ll call me if you need help, and I know that if you _can’t_ call me, that’s—there’d be nothing I could do for you anyway, so I—” She bit her lip; she’d thought it enough times, but never said it out loud, but she pushed through because she was begging him to be honest with her and the least she could do was try to return the favor. “So I—I might as well sleep while I can before waking up to face the fact that—”

Her throat tightened too much to speak.

And he looked like he was in pain, but she knew for once that it wasn’t physical.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “That wasn’t what I was trying to say, and I’m not trying to guilt you, I’m just saying…you’re worth it, all right? And I won’t lie and say I don’t wish you’d get hurt less, but I still…” She trailed off, no idea how to put into words the comfort she found in him, the strength. And not just external, but the resoluteness he had deep inside. Half the time it felt like she only pretended to know what she was doing, what she believed in. But he was unshakeable.

She couldn’t put all of that into words, she wasn’t as eloquent as he was, so she just said, “I need you. I know I don’t…I don’t always show that. But I do. I need you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some h/c angst to help with being in lockdown? Stay safe and healthy, everyone! (And I promise this fic will get...kinda less angsty. And then angsty again. But, like, the angst won't be 100%???)

Matt

Throughout everything she’d said, her heartbeat hadn’t waivered. That was the part he still couldn’t quite believe.

Because there were things you said, sometimes, to people who needed help. Platitudes you offered because the compassion mattered more at the time than the truth of the words. He did it all the time with clients. “Everything’s going to be fine,” (he couldn’t guarantee that) or “I completely understand,” (he didn’t always) or “It wasn’t your fault” (sometimes it was).

But from what he could tell, Claire meant every word.

He still didn’t understand what she could possibly need from him, but he didn’t really want to dig deeper. For now, the sentiment alone was enough.

As for the…other stuff, the stuff about whether he could take care of himself, that _really_ wasn’t a discussion he wanted to have while he was getting battered by the ghosts of previous injuries. So he just said, “Thank you, Claire,” and she just nodded, and they went back to the business of keeping him alive.

It was getting less bad. Fewer injuries from Stick. And Claire and Foggy were so obviously relieved that Matt hoped they wouldn’t make him explain why he…wasn’t.

A specific combination of bruises—to his forearm from blocking one of Stick’s strikes, then to his shin when Stick blocked one of Matt’s spinning kicks—made Matt close his eyes. He remembered those two bruises, and he remembered all seven that came afterwards, a pattern that he still to this day felt on his skin sometimes, in those awful before-sunrise hours when he was trying to sleep.

They were the last bruises Stick ever gave him before Matt tried to give him that stupid bracelet. He’d relived them a thousand times in his mind, remembering that day over and over.

The very last bruise bloomed into place. A cluster of bruises, actually, from Stick’s fingers wrapping vicelike around his arm. Matt pressed his fingers over the spot, trying to make it last.

He didn’t actually wish, now, that he’d kept that bracelet instead of offering it. Not anymore. He’d gotten good enough on his own, without Stick, and he knew for a fact that Stick would never have let him go to law school. He never would’ve met Foggy, or Karen, or Claire. Or _Maggie_.

But it’d taken about two decades to convince himself that what Stick did to him was wrong, that Matt was better off without Stick in his life at all. Two decades of reliving those bruises and wishing they hadn’t been the end.

Foggy’s breathing hitched and Claire set her hand on his knee. “Matt? Is something hurting you?”

He quickly shook his head and tried to smile reassuringly. “No. I swear,” he added, sensing their collective disbelief. “Just thinking.”

“Not good thoughts?” she guessed, probing and trying to sound casual about it.

Just because they were dating, or whatever they were doing, he should probably define the terms with her soon, didn’t mean he had to tell her everything he was thinking. Right? Because she wouldn’t understand. She and Foggy, neither of them could possibly understand. They hadn’t gone through what he’d gone through.

(A voice in the back of his mind somewhere pointed out that Elektra had shared in his trauma and yet even _she_ didn’t understand; that voice, which sounded a lot like Maggie’s but was using Foggy’s vocabulary, suggested that maybe presence or absence of trauma wasn’t a sufficient factor by itself to determine comprehension. He ignored it. Easier to assume Foggy and Claire wouldn’t understand.)

To her credit, Claire didn’t push. Instead, she cuddled closer against him on the couch, tracing a pattern over his sweatpants.

And when the last bruise finally faded, Matt hid his face in her hair so that neither of them could see the one or two tears he couldn’t quite hold back.

Claire

Things seemed…better now. Matt had stopped flinching, bruising, and bleeding. She took that to mean he must’ve finished his training with that Stick guy and now, according to him, wouldn’t have any more injuries until he started Daredeviling, which should theoretically give them _years_ of peace. (Which should translate into, what, three hours? Four?) Except she wasn’t so sure she trusted his calculus. After all, he hadn’t bothered to mention that he’d gotten _poisoned_ as a kid, so…she really didn’t know which injures he’d actually think were worth mentioning.

After about half an hour of the three of them sitting in relative quiet, however, Matt was very suddenly not the center of attention. Foggy let out a scream and jumped to his feet, clutching his arm where a splintered piece of bone was suddenly poking out through the skin.

Claire leapt into action, snatching clean gauze from her bag. First things first: stop the bleeding.

Foggy was pale, staring up at the ceiling with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it’s not that bad—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Claire snapped as she pressed the gauze to the wound. She was probably harsher than was warranted but, honestly, she’d expected Foggy to be more reasonable. She’d had no idea his broken arm was a compound fracture, which was just _wonderful_. The only upside was, the injury was spontaneous and conjured by alien rain, so she didn’t have to worry about contaminates getting into the open wound. She _did_ have to figure out how to set the wound without making everything worse. This was supposed to be done in an _operating_ room, and here she was in her boyfriend’s _living_ room.

Swearing under her breath, she peeled back the gauze. The bleeding had definitely slowed. Matt, meanwhile, was offering Foggy some pills that…Claire didn’t recognize.

“What’re those?” she demanded. Boyfriend or not, no way was Matt drugging her patient without her permission.

He jumped guiltily. “Oxycodone. I just thought—”

Claire cut him off with a jerky nod of assent, shoving the issue of _why Matt had a stash of oxycodone_ onto the backburner for now. Once Foggy swallowed the pills, Matt came to stand silently at Claire’s side.

“Any broken fragments?” she asked.

He shook his head and just stood there, waiting to be of use.

“Okay. Help me get him on the couch.”

Working together, they lowered Foggy onto the couch, careful not to jostle his arm. Then she chewed on her lip. Oxycodone normally took twenty to thirty minutes to take effect, but she didn’t want to wait that long to reduce the bone. What if the alien rain tried to heal it prematurely? He’d get stuck with a mangled arm that would probably have to be rebroken, and…yeah, that was something they’d all rather avoid.

She took a deep breath. “We need to go for it.”

Foggy groaned loudly.

Ignoring that, Claire set her hands on the arm. “Matt. Tell me if I’ve gone too far.” It wasn’t as good as an actual x-ray, but his ears were _so_ much better than nothing.

Well, Foggy started screaming, but even though Claire preferred to have patients unconscious for this part, sometimes that just wasn’t possible. She was used to working past screams. Blocking him out, she focused on the task at hand. She quickly reduced the bone, wrapped the whole thing up, and dug a brace out of her bag. “Sorry,” she muttered when maneuvering the brace into place just made Foggy scream again. She’d rather use a splint, but she’d work with what she had.

“There we go,” she breathed, lowering Foggy’s arm to rest over his stomach. “You’ll be good as new in just…uh…” She tried to do the mental math and got stuck. “Matt, throw me my phone,” she said, planning on using the calculator app.

But Matt was frozen on his feet, eyes wide and fixed on Foggy’s motionless form. He was pale, paler than Foggy.

“Hey.” She cupped his face in her hand. “He’ll be okay.”

Matt seemed to be deliberately controlling his breathing. “I know.” His head tilted minute. “He just passed out. Not from the oxy.” Guilt was written all over his face.

“C’mere.” She steered him back into the nearest chair. “Not your fault, remember? He was thirteen.”

“He ran out in the rain,” Matt whispered, “just to get to me.”

“Yeah,” Claire replied steadily. “I guess you don’t have a monopoly on self-sacrificing martyrdom, huh?”

He picked at a stray thread in his sweats. “That’s redundant.”

“Listen.” Claire settled herself on the arm of the chair, keeping her hand on his face. “People make dumb decisions when the ones they love are hurting, all right? And that’s not on you. That’s Foggy’s choice.”

Matt’s sightless eyes searched her face. “I can’t pretend my choices don’t affect you. Both of you.”

Her heart warmed and clenched at the same time. “Well, you don’t get to set the limits on what we do to show you we care.”

“That’s not…” His eyebrows tightened in confusion. “I’m not doing that.”

He was, he definitely was. As much as he seemed reluctantly willing to wreck her sleep schedule waking her up in the middle of the night, or fall asleep at the office and leave Foggy with more than his fair share of work, he drew a hard line around either of them experiencing any physical injury because of him. And wasn’t that just how he’d been when they first met?

 _I never thought I’d be putting anyone else at risk,_ he’d said in that quiet, broken voice of his, finally letting her see how scared he really was only when he was tending her wounds.

 _And you almost got killed,_ he’d said. _Because of me._

She treated wounds all the time; she knew that the line from cause to effect wasn’t always so clear. But she also knew that it was almost three in the morning and if his mind was in turmoil, it was probably trying to catch up to his body. This was definitely not the time to try to change his entire worldview.

“You’re a good friend,” she said instead. “Foggy wouldn’t be here if he didn’t think that.”

Matt’s response was a bitter exhale. “He’s here because he agrees with you—that I can’t take care of myself.”

Claire bit her lip. Those words were gonna haunt her forever, weren’t they? “He’s here because he loves you,” she corrected.

And Matt couldn’t seem to find a way to argue with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I looked at sooooo many gross pictures while googling treatment of a compound fracture. Just saying.


	7. Chapter 7

Claire

She nudged his leg with her socked foot and pitched her voice carefully casual. “So, you wouldn’t take the morphine, but you’re stockpiling oxy?”

“I’m not—I’m not _stockpiling_ it, Claire, geeze.”

“Seriously. What’s up?”

Matt leaned back in the chair, clearly buying himself time. “It’s nothing, Claire. Most of them were left over from, um, an unfortunate tooth incident in college. I didn’t even use them then, but I wasn’t gonna just throw them away. Waste not, you know.” He flashed her a smile, as if to prove that his teeth were all where they should be and deflect further questions.

Claire did not like being deflected. “ _Most_ of them were from a tooth incident?”

“Look,” he said quietly. “Sometimes, it gets too much. So.”

“What gets too much?”

His eyes darted in her direction and his half-smirk was forced: that intentional, please-find-me-charming look that he’d sported to such great effect back before he let her know his name. “Are you gonna pity me if I say life?”

Yeah, because Matt Murdock would always rather she hate him than pity him. “No,” she said calmly, “but I _am_ gonna lecture you on how _extremely_ unhealthy that is.”

“Yeah, well…” He shifted, letting his cheek rest against the back of the chair and blinking up at her through his lashes, unfairly dark for a white boy. “Maybe lecture me later?”

She _detested_ leaving things unresolved. Especially health things. Especially health things that were the product of Matt’s record-awful decision-making. But she bit back her pride or stubbornness or whatever it was that made her feel like she had to fix absolutely everything about Matt as soon as possible.

(Still, she kind of wished she’d put up less of a fight over the morphine earlier. If she was allowed so few battles to pick, she should probably be more judicious.)

“You’re thinking,” Matt said suddenly.

“Duh,” she said.

“What about?”

She hummed. “It would never work on paper, would it? A vigilante and a nurse.”

He frowned slightly. “I think it works really well on paper, actually.”

“In a romantic relationship,” she clarified. “Where the nurse worries constantly about the vigilante’s wellbeing but the vigilante doesn’t appreciate being…” What was that word he used? “Coddled.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”

“I think maybe…we jumped into things too quickly.”

And just like that, his face closed off. “Oh.”

“Not like that!” she said quickly. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be together. _Matt_.” She reached out and grabbed his hand, because despite making his living on words he always seemed more convinced by physical communication. “I’m just saying, maybe we should’ve _talked_ more.”

Now he just looked slightly confused. “About?”

“About…expectations. Boundaries. Triggers. Like, I knew you’d be careless about getting hurt and I knew that would bother _me_ , but I had no idea that me being bothered would bother _you_.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, eyebrows drawing together like he was trying to concentrate. “Mmm-hmm.”

“So maybe we should talk about that? Not during all _this_ , since we have enough to deal with without…” She waved her hand generally. “Relationship negotiation. But we _do_ need to talk about it. And in the meantime, we need to figure out how to…give each other extra leash or something.”

He grinned loopily. “Leash.”

She stared at him. “What?”

He leaned back against the couch, head falling a bit to one side. “Foggy thinks I should get a dog. Right? Hey, right, Foggy?” His eyes drifted around the room. “Oh. He’s out still. What’d you give’im, Claire?”

The slur in his voice made her snap back into alertness. “Are you…are you concussed right now?”

He laughed. “Statistically, yeah, that’d make sense. But…” Reaching up, he tapped his fingers idly over his head. “Don’t feel anything.”

“Yeah, I’m not buying that.” Sliding off the chair, she crouching in front of him and held his chin, steadying him. “Lemme see your eyes.”

They locked onto her, wide and earnest. “Claire. Claire, you smell really good. _So good._ You’re really pretty, Claire.”

“Thank you,” she said automatically, squinting at him. His pupils were the same size. “Are you drugged?”

“What, now? Or back…back…when are we?”

“What?”

His eyes rolled thoughtfully around. “Didn’t do drugs in hi’school, didn’t do drugs in college, ’cept the oxy but that was jus’ enough to sleep, y’know? And didn’t even do drugs in law school. So…and…so…I haven’t been Daredevil yet, so…can’t be drugs.”

Claire stared at him. It took a second to follow his logic—because they hadn’t reached his first Daredevil wounds, his past self must still be pre-Daredevil, and his pre-Daredevil self hadn’t been on drugs—but she was torn between figuring out when exactly he _had_ been on drugs as he was implying (and wondering if they’d been any worse than the oxy), or figuring out what was wrong with him _now_.

“Claire?” he asked. “Are you looking at me? You’re lookin’ at me, right?”

Wait.

College.

Baby Matt at college, out from under the thumbs of Stick and his abusive nuns.

She smacked herself on the forehead. “Are you drunk?”

He laughed. “I kinda, um, kinda feel like it. Yeah, yeah, prob’ly.”

All right, well, _technically_ ingesting too much alcohol could be considered poison. She hadn’t realized alien rain would be such a stickler. But Claire wasn’t complaining. College drunkenness was vastly preferable to drugs or concussions. Besides, unless something was actively making him upset, drunk Matt tended to be pretty chill. Maybe he’d even sleep.

“Claire,” he said.

“What?”

“Are you tired?”

Exhausted, but she was trying not to think about that, given how many hours of this were still ahead of them. She shrugged.

“You could…um. If you wanna…um.” He awkwardly touched the space next to him.

“Oh, Matt,” she murmured, sliding onto the chair beside him. It was a bit of a squish, but it was worth it. “You could’ve just asked.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but he did slip his arm around her, holding her even closer. Letting out a tiny hum of approval when she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “Hey, Claire?”

“What?”

“M’really…m’ _really_ glad you found me in that dumpster.”

She smiled slowly. “Me, too.”

“And, and, Claire?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad for…for whatever thing made it so Foggy and I could be roommates.”

She hadn’t thought about that at all, about what it would’ve been like if Matt had gotten someone different. Someone less kind, someone less _good_. And then she thought about what kind of random survey must’ve placed them together and snorted.

“Claire!” He suddenly sounded very worried.

She sat up. “What?”

“D’you think Foggy knows?”

“I’m sure he does, Matt.”

“But I should _tell_ him.”

Her heart warmed. “That’s a really good idea, but maybe wait until he wakes up?”

Matt thought about that for a second. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

Things were going so well for once that she decided to test her luck. “And maybe we should follow his example, huh? It’s _really_ late at night.”

He had to think about that a little longer. When he responded, his voice was small. “Will you…will you stay with me?”

The way he asked it, like he already knew the answer would be no but couldn’t help double-checking anyway, made her heart ache a little. Leaning in, she kissed him lightly. “I’ll be right here.”

At some point after that, Matt listed sideways on the chair, eyes closed. Claire shifted back to perch on the arm of the chair: near enough to be keeping her promise to stay with him, far enough to have enough space to think. Or maybe to distract herself from thinking.

She blearily checked her phone. It was four in the morning. She’d gone longer than this without sleeping, but never in the middle of so much stress. She felt like she’d been walking on a tightrope ever since she’d shown up here in Apartment 6A.

But Foggy was asleep, which was good. She’d need him to have a clear head; maybe he could even keep her from saying something stupid once in a while.

And Matt was still asleep, which was even better.

If she was smart, she’d take her own advice and follow their example. But she was a bit of a hypocrite. Not that it seemed like Matt had figured that out yet. Instead of sleeping or even trying to rest, she pushed herself off the chair and padded around the room collecting gauze and other random bloodied things, making the place look less like a hospital room. Or a war room. Then she poked through Matt’s kitchen. Although she was impressed with the amount of food he had, she needed to make sure he ate something with more iron. He had some spinach in the fridge and black beans in one of the cabinets; she could work with that.

Foggy woke up sometime while she was working on putting together an iron-rejuvenating soup. She hurriedly explained that Matt was _asleep_ instead of passed out, verified that Foggy’s arm was back to normal, and made him drink water.

“What’re you making?” Foggy asked, getting up and wandering into the kitchen, blinking the sleep from his eyes.

She prodded at the soggy spinach leaves in the pot on the stove. Cooking was not her forte, all right? “Soup.”

Wordlessly, Foggy handed her a saltshaker.

Chagrinned, Claire shook a little salt into the pot. “The point isn’t flavor. The point is to restore his iron levels.” She wished he had meat; the iron in meat was easier for the body to absorb. But she hadn’t found any in his sparse kitchen.

“Blood doesn’t replenish?” Foggy asked. “I mean, if it can restore a broken bone, I feel like it’s not too much to ask for it to give back all the blood it stole.”

“You’d think.”

Foggy fell silent at that, moodily watching her stir the soup. It really didn’t smell great. She should get better at cooking if only to keep Matt alive. And because his sad kitchen made her sad. And because she was imagining the look on his face when he ate something hot and delicious that she’d made just for him, and it made her feel warm inside in a way she hadn’t felt since this latest fiasco started.

She was playing with the daydream in her head and letting herself relax a little in the relative peace when Foggy said, “You know, I used to hate you.”

She whipped around with a glare. “Excuse me?”

He still looked sleepy, the aftereffects of passing out under the influence of oxy. He shrugged. “I should’ve known about you. I should’ve known about _everything_. But Matt kept too many secrets, and for a while you were just this rep—” The word splintered over a yawn. “—Representation of all the lies.”

Claire rolled her eyes. “That’s not _my_ fault.”

“Yeah, but I still hated you for it. Easier to hate you than Matt. Plus, there was the whole fact that you were basically the reason he was still _alive_ , which made it hard to hate you, which made me hate you more.”

“Thanks, Foggy. This is really cheering me up.”

“Sorry,” he said, not really sounding apologetic. “Again, I would’ve hated him if I could’ve. Probably.”

Claire turned off the heat on the stove. “Yeah, he’s weirdly hard to hate.”

“I, uh…” Foggy cleared his throat. “I don’t hate you anymore. For what it’s worth.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly.

“And not just ’cause you keep him alive from week to week, and not just ’cause you stopped my arm from being stuck the wrong way.”

“Thanks,” she repeated, not sure where he was going with this.

“I get why you two are together, you know,” Foggy added.

She raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You both wanna save the whole world,” he said simply. “Me, I’m focused on Matt, Marci, Karen. My family. And that’s…pretty much it. You and Matt, though? Haven’t met a person you don’t wanna help.”

“You don’t really know me, Foggy,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” He agreed softly. “But I hear how Matt talks about you.”

That… _that_ cut right through her no-nonsense medical expert exterior and nestled somewhere deep in her chest. Maybe that was why she ended up admitting, out loud and in front of another human being, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Foggy was quiet for a moment. “Your best?” he offered eventually.

She snorted.

Foggy sniffed loudly. “That soup smells disgusting, though. Just FYI.”

She chucked the bag of spinach at his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We. Should've. Gotten. To. See. Foggy. And. Claire. Interact.


	8. Chapter 8

Claire

She was drinking some water to stave off her growing headache when, without warning, the source of her headache jerked awake, coughing and gagging. For a second, she thought Matt was about to be sick. But he just spat blood onto the floor and rubbed his mouth.

“What the hell?” Claire demanded, jamming her hip on his counter in her rush to get to him.

“I’m fine.” Matt’s tongue flicked out, redder than usual, to scrape against his teeth. “Okay, so, I’ve definitely started being Daredevil at this point.”

Great. So their night was about to get so much worse. At least Matt and Foggy had gotten a brief respite. Claire covered her growing agitation ( _concern_ , she was _concerned_ , but she expressed concern through agitation and she knew it) by returning to the kitchen, wetting a napkin, and going back to gently dab at Matt’s blood-red lips. “You need a mouth guard.”

He leaned slightly into her touch and seemed to think about it. “Or I could just not get hit in the face.”

“You need a mouth guard,” she repeated. “Before someone punches you in the jaw and you bite your tongue off.”

“Bleh,” Foggy said, contributing his thoughts on the issue.

Matt shot her a crooked, bloody grin. “Have you ever worn a mouth guard? You can’t talk without sounding stupid. How’m I supposed to interrogate people?”

“You take the mouth guard _out_ first, dummy.”

Matt looked deeply disappointed in her. “You can’t stop an interrogation to take out a mouth guard, Claire. You have to go straight from throwing punches to throwing questions. It’s more about the drama and the timing than anything.”

“Not unlike a cross-examination,” Foggy commented.

Matt nodded, clearly pleased to have someone on his side. “Exactly.”

“You guys are both idiots,” Claire informed them, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him and folding her hands in her lap. “All right, Matt. Talk to me. What’re we looking at for the next few hours?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You expect me to remember every injury I’ve ever had since putting on the mask?”

“I expect you to _work with me_ here, c’mon.”

Rolling his eyes up towards the ceiling, he complied: “Various cuts and bruises innumerable, but nothing too awful until the night I met you.”

(She’d never forget that night. Never forget how many times she’d thought the strange man in a mask would die in her living room. Never forget how badly those thoughts had pained her even before she knew him.)

“Then, uh, still nothing too bad until…” He swallowed and his eyes darted towards Foggy. “Until you found out.”

Ever since learning that he’d gotten dosed with the rain, Claire had been torn between trying to figure out how she could possibly prepare for that night, the night his best friend called him in desperation, and trying not to think about it. She was a _nurse_ , she was good with injuries, but it was different when Matt’s life was at risk. It always would be.

“Then I got shot in the head,” Matt hurried on, like he was trying to steer the conversation towards something _normal_.

“Shot in the head?” Claire yelped.

“Through my helmet,” he reassured her. “It just knocked me offline for a bit, that’s all.”

Foggy groaned loudly.

Claire couldn’t believe him. Actually, she could. “And you didn’t _call_ me?”

“I was unconscious,” Matt reminded her.

“You didn’t call me _at any point_.”

“We were…” Matt fiddled with the loose fabric of his sweats. A tiny cut appeared above his eyebrow, a bit of blood trickling down his cheek. “We weren’t…”

Claire narrowed her eyes. Yeah, they’d never _really_ reconciled until after he came back from the so-called dead, but she’d assumed the fact that he stopped calling her after he got the new suit was because he hadn’t needed her, not because he’d been avoiding her.

Although. To be fair. She’d been the one who rejected him.

“Okay,” she said evenly. “So you got shot in the head.” She was trying really hard to pretend that she wasn’t freaked out by that. By the way his eyebrows pinched together, a mixture of guilt and concern, she knew she wasn’t fooling him. She opened her mouth to forge ahead, to ask what else she should be aware of, but before she could get any words out, his head snapped to the side again.

Foggy flinched at the sight.

Claire was less bothered on principle. Matt crawled through her window every other night with random injuries that were rarely life-threatening. If he really had started being Daredevil by this point, they were gonna have to get used to him almost constantly reacting to some nonexistent punch or something.

But when the strikes didn’t let up, Foggy looked increasingly tense.

“Fogs,” Matt managed between hits. “It’s fine. This is _normal_.”

“What—this is _not_ normal,” Foggy spluttered.

“Normal’s relative,” Matt said easily. Before their eyes, a bruise bloomed on his cheekbone. “Hey, it’s okay,” he panted, flashing them a _very_ out-of-place grin. “These next injuries are my favorites.”

“What,” Claire said flatly.

Matt nodded. “Yeah, ’cause— _ah_.” He suddenly twisted to grab his left arm. Blood welled up between his fingers. He cleared his throat. “They’re the reason I met you.”

Foggy

Claire immediately started swearing in Spanish.

She’d been maintaining a pretty chill vibe throughout all this, relatively speaking, which was just making Foggy feel inexperienced and weirdly unprepared, like he’d shown up for a test without a pencil. That chill vibe was gone now.

Matt’s words from The Night That Changed Everything rang in Foggy’s ears. _She found me in a dumpster,_ he’d said. _Half dead._

While Foggy sat there uselessly, trying to think about what _half dead_ even _meant_ to someone like Matt, Claire snapped into action. The stitches and bandages Foggy was expecting, and the ice from the freezer wasn’t too weird, but he had no idea what to think when she pulled a small needle thing from a pouch in her bag.

“Calm down,” Matt said, doing that flinching thing that meant his past self had just taken a punch or a kick or gotten thrown against a wall or something. “Your hearts are both going crazy. At least Claire should know it wasn’t that bad. I fought human traffickers straight afterwards, remember?”

“Do _you_ remember?” she snapped. “You were pretty concussed.”

“Nah, just— _ngh_.” He grunted, sucking in a breath and clutching at his side; blood dripped between his fingers. “Distracted by your beauty.”

Foggy reminded himself very sternly that this—Matt bleeding unapologetically and flirting—was normal for their relationship. Calling Matt crazy would do nothing to change his bad behavior. Besides, this was all lightyears better than the way he’d cringed and tried to hide everything Stick had done to him.

“Sit down on the couch and take off your shirt and lemme look at that,” Claire ordered.

Matt winked—actually _winked_ —as crossed the room to the couch, pulling his shirt over his head as he went. But he didn’t sit; he stretched himself out horizontally on the couch, giving Claire better access to his wounds, especially the brand new, big, bloody one on the right side.

And that, the way he was laid up like that without a shirt, bleeding, it just…it brought back some bad memories for Foggy, all right? So Foggy looked away for a second, just to remind himself that _now_ wasn’t _then_ , which meant he missed whatever it was that suddenly made Matt cry out.

He whipped around again to see Matt with his head pushing back into the armrest, staring wildly at nothing, while Claire skimmed her fingers over his torso. “Ribs, right?”

“The—the first one, yeah,” Matt managed to say through gritted teeth. “Forgot this part.”

“That’d be the concussion,” she muttered. “Ice, incoming.”

No sooner had she pressed the ice to his body then he cried out again, pressing his hand against his ribs.

“Shh, you’re all right.” Claire peeled his hand away to spread the ice better. “Just two ribs, right?”

Matt didn’t look so cocky anymore. He was barely breathing as he nodded.

“Hey, deep breaths.” Leaving the ice in place, she dumped alcohol on a piece of gauze. “I don’t know if you _can_ get pneumonia from this, but that’s the last thing we need right now. This is gonna sting, by the way.”

Matt had already tensed up—probably from the smell of the alcohol. Foggy didn’t really think it was possible for him to tense up _more_ , but he did as soon as she started cleaning the cuts. Despite what looked like a concerted effort to breathe more deeply, Matt’s chest was barely moving. Suddenly, his head jerked to the side; at the same time, blood started running down the side of his face and matting in his hair.

“And there’s the concussion,” Claire murmured, eyes on the deeper wound to his side as she secured a bandage over it.

Matt had a death grip on the fabric of his sweatpants. “This is—this is _substantially_ less fun than I remembered.”

“Big surprise,” Claire muttered. “Just focus on me, all right?” She cupped his cheek, the gesture shockingly gentle for Claire. Matt was not doing a great job following her instructions about deep breaths, but he turned his face into her touch and closed his eyes. “Did I miss anything?”

“Not…not yet.”

“Okay.” She wet her lips, looking strangely nervous. Matt mirrored her expression, maybe because he was picking up on her anxious heartbeat or maybe because he was just as scared as she was about whatever was about to happen.

“Um,” Foggy said. “What—”

Before he could get the question out, Matt’s hand shot out, grabbing Claire’s arm, and he started gasping for air. The sound was _awful_ , like each inhale was more useless than the last.

Claire tried to wrench her arm free. No surprise it didn’t work. “Matt, let go!”

He didn’t. Couldn’t? He just kept gasping, body straining like if he could just get up he could get away from whatever was happening to him, legs splayed out like he wanted to run.

Foggy should help. But he was frozen with horror and had literally no idea what was even going on, much less what he should be doing.

“Matt!” Claire jerked harder. Still couldn’t get free of his grip. Her other hand reached for her supplies. “Foggy!” she yelled. “Get me an alcohol swab!”

Foggy jolted to life, scrambling to do as ordered, trying to block out the terrible sounds Matt kept making. He finally passed Claire a cotton ball soaked in alcohol, which she spread over part of Matt’s chest with her free hand. Matt’s death grip on her arm must’ve gotten weaker because she suddenly ripped free, grabbed that needle thing, and _stabbed_.

Foggy’s eyes bugged out of their sockets.

Matt’s jaw clenched tight and he let out a grunt, both shocked and pained. Claire released the pressure on the needle—not a needle, a syringe? Maybe?—and pulled it back out of his chest. Matt’s body arched, following the needle, but as soon as it was free he sank back onto the couch, leather creaking under him, and started gulping for oxygen.

Claire cleaned the syringe. “Breathe normal, remember?”

“Trying,” Matt gritted out, grasping at the wound on his side. Fresh blood was seeping under the bandage.

For what felt like both a long time and not very long at all, they all three sat there. The stupid billboard lights danced across Matt’s pale face. Foggy’s stomach growled anticlimactically.

“Okay,” Claire said at last, not sounding quite as much like the medical professional Foggy was used to. “That was—where do you think you’re going?”

Matt had started pushing himself upright, a wince permanently etched on his features.

“Uh, buddy?” Foggy hurried close in case Matt spontaneously collapsed or something.

Moving stiffly, Matt sidestepped and held up a hand to keep him at bay. “Easier if I walk it out. Trust me.”

Claire’s eyebrows shot up. “Walk _what_ out, two cracked ribs?”

“The Russians.”

Foggy blinked, hands still hovering awkwardly around Matt like Matt would suddenly change his mind and go, _you know what, I actually would like gentle physical contact for once in my life, thanks._ “What Russians, exactly?”

Claire glanced between the two of them. “You haven’t told him?”

Matt just took advantage of Claire and Foggy’s distraction to put the couch between himself and the rest of the room. He started pacing, limping a little and taking forced, even breaths, while Claire explained haltingly about human traffickers and fake police officers and a missing little boy. And Foggy…Foggy knew Matt was a hero, honestly, but he was usually thinking more about the bad guys Matt was beating up, not about the people Matt was saving.

That little boy, though. He must’ve been so scared. And no less scared after Matt plowed through a gang of human traffickers, probably.

Speaking of which. Matt had started that twitching thing again, reacting to hits he couldn’t see coming, hissing through his teeth. His fists kept inching up towards his chin. A boxer’s guard. Except there was nothing real to guard against.

And yeah, Foggy kinda got the whole rather-walk-around thing. _Maybe_ pacing his kitchen wouldn’t give him enough adrenaline to ignore his injuries the way a real fight apparently did (which was just—ridiculous, but this was not the time to dissect that), but lying on his couch wouldn’t give him anything to think about at all except all the pain.

It was kind of impressive, actually.

But more sickening was the fact that it _wasn’t stopping_.

“How long does the fight last?” Foggy whispered at Claire, eyes glued to Matt.

“No idea,” she whispered back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of us isolating, remember that no one will judge you for putting on your favorite music and dancing wildly in the living room.
> 
> Oh also almost all of the comments on the last chapter were just about drunk Matt so clearly I need to write more drunk Matt. The people have spoken!


	9. Chapter 9

Foggy

Matt flinched again, locking his jaw, and pushed the words out fast in an outward breath: “Could you guys please shut up.”

Foggy vividly remembered stubbing his toe once and cursing out his mum, so he had no problem giving Matt a pass on snapping at them. But he kinda thought sitting in silence was worse for all involved. Didn’t Matt _want_ distraction? It sure didn’t look like he was trying to meditate.

It hit Foggy—not for the first time tonight, but in a different way—how little he still knew about what Matt did every night. And how he actually handled the toll on his body (and conscience).

There in the middle of his apartment, Matt kept one arm locked around his ribs as he started hopping up and down on the balls of his feet with his head tipped back towards the ceiling, eyes tightly closed. His lips were moving soundlessly and Foggy couldn’t tell if it was English or Spanish, prayers or curses.

Foggy wasn’t sure how long it went on. He just knew he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

When it stopped, there was no transition. All of a sudden, Matt simply stood frozen, his entire body taught, waiting for the next strike. And apparently, it didn’t come. Slowly, like he didn’t trust the stillness, he came down off his toes, chin tilting in different directions like he expected to be able to sense it.

When Foggy looked at Claire, he saw his own expression of shock on her face. “Wow,” she said finally. “That was…are you okay?”

Matt pitched forward to lean against the back of the couch, head sagging between his shoulders. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

Why did she even ask?

Matt took a moment to breathe before elaborating: “They didn’t even land that many hits.”

There were multiple confusing things about that statement, and Foggy latched onto the first one: “So how come it looks like it hurt so bad?”

Matt lifted his head enough to throw Foggy a look like he was being stupid. “Because my ribs are cracked? And I tore out all my stitches with the first few punches?”

Oh. Foggy’d kind of forgotten about the ribs, or maybe just blocked it out, and it was hard to tell that the glistening on Matt’s skin was fresh blood instead of blood he’d lost, you know, five whole minutes ago.

Claire snatched up her kit, swearing under her breath, as she plunged in to wage her own battle against Matt’s injuries. While she tore out the broken stitches to replace them, Foggy tried to make conversation.

“When you say they didn’t land that many hits,” he began, and then kind of lost where he was going for a second because, ugh, the torn stitches looked really gross. He started again: “How many guys were you fighting?”

Matt’s fingers dug into the back of the couch and he grabbed onto the conversation, probably in lieu of focusing on the needle trying in vain to tug his skin together. “Ten?” he hazarded. “Eleven? Hard to— _ah_ —keep track of heartbeats in the middle of— _ah_ , Claire—”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she hissed, not stopping her work, “would you rather do this? Aren’t you used to this, anyway?”

He hesitated, then met her tired frustration with painful sincerity: “Not without a break between. Have to…build up resilience again, you know?”

Foggy didn’t now how to react to that. He’d thought Matt’s pain tolerance was primarily physical, like pain just rolled off him. Matt certainly _acted_ like that. He hadn’t realized how much of it was mental, like Matt _willed_ the pain away. Or willed himself not to care about it.

(But if Matt was running out of energy to keep up his stoic attitude, Foggy felt the tiniest bit relieved, because Foggy was running out of energy _watching_ his stoic attitude.)

“Okay,” Claire said, tying off the stitches. She was using that word a lot tonight. It reminded Foggy of his kindergarten teacher. She always said “Okay” to try to calm down all the kids, and it never worked. “Think we can move to the couch? To actually _sitting_ on it, I mean.”

“Yeah.” Matt pushed himself off the back, but his hand skated over the wall as he made his way around his furniture. Foggy couldn’t tell if he was using it for balance or just trying to place himself in the room. He pulled on his pale sweatshirt as he went, zipping it up. Not because the apartment was cold (it wasn’t) and definitely not because Matt Murdock was particularly overflowing with modesty. Foggy remembered a second later that blood loss made people cold, and he looked around for a blanket.

Before he could find one, though, both Matt and Claire had settled on the couch: she curled up with her head on his chest, he with his arm around her shoulders. Matt didn’t really look like he was lacking for body heat now that he had her pressed up against him. They were both obviously exhausted, but something about the way they fit together like magnets made Foggy wish he could take a picture of the moment. For a long time, they sat like that without speaking. Just resting.

Then Claire said: “He rescued the boy, Foggy. In case you were wondering.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth tilted tiredly upwards.

“I wasn’t,” Foggy told him honestly. “I knew you must’ve rescued him. I’ve seen the news stories, you know. You…you rescue pretty much everyone, don’t you?”

“Not even close,” Matt said softly, and for a panic-stricken second Foggy thought he’d clumsily forced Matt to remember every awful mistake he’d ever made. Then Matt’s eyes drifted up to hover around Foggy’s face. “But it means a lot that you’d say that.”

Foggy tried to convey the full force of his conviction as he leaned forward. “I mean it, buddy.”

And of course Matt knew he wasn’t lying. That slight tilt to Matt’s mouth became more recognizable as a smile. Not quite the full-fledged one Matt broke out when he was laughing, but something gentle and genuine.

A second later, the moment was broken when Matt hunched forward with a hand pressed to his side. “Ow!”

Claire jerked off his shoulder, already groping for her bag. “What is it this time?”

“No worries,” Matt said quickly. “It’s the, uh, the cut from the Russians. Opened up. Happens all the time.” He shifted his hand so they could see the blood seeping through his pale sweatshirt.

“From doing backflips?” Foggy asked sarcastically.

Matt blushed, actually _blushed_. “From, uh, from walking too fast, actually. After Fisk’s man hired us? Wesley? I followed him. Opened this up again.”

Foggy felt his eyes widen. Matt had been late to meet with their client after they got the case, and he’d changed his shirt. Now Foggy’s brain was rifling through history, quite without his permission, to remember every other time Matt had been mysteriously late or had randomly changed his shirt. Foggy had assumed at the time that Matt was just…careless, distracted. Forgot what time it was, spilled coffee on himself, whatever.

But no, oh no. It was apparently because he’d been busy tearing open _all his bloody stab wounds_.

And probably calling Claire, asking her to redo the stitches he’d so thanklessly torn out. Honestly, Murdock.

“Let me see,” she murmured, starting on redoing those stitches once Matt unzipped the hoodie for her. He was gonna look like Frankenstein when this was over. Correction: he was gonna look _more_ like Frankenstein. It didn’t take long; he hadn’t ripped them _all_ out, apparently, though not for lack of trying. “There.” She sat back on her heels, but let her hand linger on his abs.

“Thank you, Claire,” Matt said, and the words were totally what you’d expect in this context, but the tone was one Foggy swore he’d never heard before: gentle and smooth and heavy, like warm honey. His hand reached out, brushed over her arm. He paused, eyes narrowing slightly, as his fingertips moved to the part of her arm he’d gripped during the worst of the injuries from the human traffickers. Foggy couldn’t see any marks on her darker skin in the apartment’s dim light, but Matt’s fingers fanned out, mapping whatever it was Foggy couldn’t see. A storm rose in his sightless eyes.

Foggy gulped silently.

Claire held still under Matt’s touch. “What?”

“Did…” He was paling fast. “Did _I_ do this?”

Claire’s other hand reached up, fingers curling firmly around Matt’s. “You were suffocating. It’s fine.”

Matt snatched free and stumbled a few feet away from her. “It’s _not_ fine! Claire, I—”

She scoffed loudly. “You just got beat up by eleven Russians, and you’re upset that I’m a little bruised?”

“Because—” Matt cut himself off, eyes wide with guilt and horror.

Foggy tried to figure out if it would be more unobtrusive to keep sitting there or to find an excuse to leave the room.

“Matt.” Claire stood up more slowly, voice pinched with an exasperation Foggy recognized: an exasperation regularly elicited by Matt’s particular brand of self-flagellating martyrdom. “It was an accident.”

Matt’s chest rose and fell with deep, measured breaths, a sure sign that he was fighting his natural instinct to beat up whomever threatened his friends. Which, in this case, was…himself.

Claire wisely didn’t try to get any closer, and she kept her voice even as she said, “You’re far from the first person to hurt me while I’m trying to patch them up.”

Matt backed away from her into the center of the apartment. “But how many of those people actually know how to do real damage?”

“It doesn’t matter! Your training only makes you more dangerous if you’re trying to use it.”

“Consciously or unconsciously?”

Claire…Claire didn’t have a response to that, not quickly enough, anyway, because Matt gave a short, sharp nod like she’d just confirmed that she was silently thinking all the things he was definitely yelling at himself right now.

Foggy’s eyes darted between them. This was not good, seriously not good. This was red alert territory, actually, because if Matt got it into his head that he couldn’t trust Claire to get close to him while he was injured and in less rigid control of himself, what happened if he kicked them out of his apartment? Or…or took off parkouring into some corner of Hell’s Kitchen where they couldn’t find him? What if he insisted on going through everything else on his own—just to spare her another bruise?

Claire finally rallied. “Matt, you won’t hurt me. I know that. I trust you.”

It was the right thing to say, probably, except for the glaring fact that he _had_ hurt her. Still, the sentiment, was good. But Matt just raised his eyes to the ceiling like he was begging for forgiveness he knew wouldn’t come.

Well, what was the point of being Matt’s best friend if Foggy couldn’t occasionally get through to him? “Listen, buddy,” he tried. “I know you’re really freaked out right now, but—”

“ _Freaked out?_ ” Matt curled his lip at what was apparently a gross understatement. “I can’t—you guys, I can’t let you—”

“Matt, calm down.”

Everything—the pain, the knowledge that the pain wasn’t gonna let up any time soon, the guilt over hurting Claire and the fear that he was gonna hurt her again and the frustration that neither Foggy nor Claire were doing what he thought was the reasonable thing by cringing away from him—all visibly collided across Matt’s face. Even if Foggy’s best friend skills weren’t enough to _stop_ Matt from fleeing the room, they were at least enough for him to see it coming.

Matt turned on his heel and started for the stairs to the roof. Foggy scrambled after him, but Matt was already at the top of the stairs, jerking the door open. Which meant this was happening, they were losing him. They were gonna find him passed out or bled out in an alley somewhere, if they found him at all.

So Foggy was actually relieved when searing agony sliced across his side, blood spilling hot and wet over his shirt. He staggered into the railing at the base of the stairs.

“Hey, Matt,” he called dizzily, “I’m bleeding.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! This chapter is longer than usual (shocker, I know) and trying to squish it down was driving me crazy, so, well, here...

Matt

Matt whirled around on the step, but he already knew Foggy wasn’t bluffing. He could smell the blood, could _taste_ it on his tongue. “Fogs—”

Claire dragged her bag over; he heard it thumping against her leg. “Foggy, sit down. Just sit down, will you?”

Foggy didn’t obey so much as collapse down onto the first step, swearing at the jolt through his body. Claire dug at the buttons of his shirt.

Matt all but skidded down the steps to crouch next to them, scanning the injury with his senses. It was a clean cut through his side. Not too bad by Matt’s own standards, he walked this kind of thing off whenever he could, but this was _Foggy_.

He’d known Foggy got hurt, obviously. He’d choked on the smell of blood that first day at the office, the first day after half the city blew up. While Matt had been holed up with a human trafficker, they’d been trying to fix the apartment of one elderly woman. And they’d paid the price for their kindness.

Pretending like Matt didn’t know anything was wrong until Foggy brought it up was harder than all his other lies. Fortunately (or was it fortunate—what would have happened if Matt had cracked then, letting Foggy in on the truth?) for him, Foggy was never one to keep a good story a secret, and he’d started explaining about Elena’s apartment almost immediately.

(He still felt guilty for that. He should’ve put the pieces together sooner, should’ve seen what Fisk was doing. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve.)

“You’re gonna be fine,” Claire was insisting, sounding about fifty times gentler with Foggy than she ever had with Matt. Matt imagined this was what she sounded like to all her patients who weren’t him. She cleaned the wound and reached for stitches, only to stop and reach in her bag for…something, Matt wasn’t sure what. Only when she injected it into the area surrounding the wound did Matt recognize it for what it was: local anesthesia.

“Okay, _good_ ,” Foggy said stiffly, voice tight with pain. “I was trying not to ask for it, y’know? Since Matt never needs it. But not gonna lie, I am _not_ complaining about not feeling the…” He waved his hand weakly.

“It’s not about what Matt needs,” Claire said, bending over Foggy’s torn skin. “It’s about what Matt wants.”

Matt pulled back, confused. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t about what he _wanted_ , it was about what he _didn’t need_. And he _didn’t need_ anesthesia.

(What he _wanted_ was Claire’s soft touch even when she wasn’t healing him, and Foggy’s laughter without any hesitance, and Karen’s smile in her voice.)

(No, that wasn’t strictly true. He also wanted pain. His stomach sank at the realization that Claire had seen right through into something he was barely able to admit to himself.)

“Matt,” Claire said, her voice calling him back out of the depths of his own head. “I need you to hold this.” She handed him a flashlight, adjusted his grip so the beam shown (presumably) on Foggy. “You need better lighting in here.”

He tried to laugh. “You’re not the first person to tell me that.”

Despite the anesthesia, Foggy still tensed up with the first puncture of the needle through his skin. “Yeah, what’s the average on that? Average times it takes someone to say something before Matt listens.”

“I…listen,” Matt protested half-heartedly.

“Oh, so you blatantly ignore us.” Foggy tilted his head, angling his face away from the wound like otherwise he’d be tempted to look at it. (Matt was thankful he couldn’t see it.) “Much better.”

Matt opened his mouth, couldn’t think of a rebuttal, decided he didn’t wanna be the kind of person who argued with his best friend while said best friend was getting stitched up, and closed his mouth again. Besides, he had to concentrate on not moving his hand without the ability to see where the light was shining.

“Matt,” Claire said suddenly.

“Did I move it?” he asked, concentrating on the flashlight.

“No, it’s just…” She leaned further over Foggy, apparently focusing entirely on her work, but Matt heard her heart speed up ever so slightly, a nervous tapping in her chest. “I think we need to talk.”

“What, _now?_ ”

She didn’t say anything, but, then, her reasoning was obvious: she knew he wouldn’t run away— _couldn’t_ —as long as as Foggy was hurt. As long as Foggy needed his help.

“About what?” he asked. He wasn’t trying to be obnoxious, really. He could think of at least three conversations right off the top of his head that they probably needed to have, and he wanted to have precisely none of them.

“Look, you…” She pulled the needle through slowly. Since Foggy was numb, Matt honestly wouldn’t put it past her to drag this out on purpose. “I mean, if Foggy hadn’t gotten hurt…what was your plan?”

Oh. They were talking about that. He rubbed at his forehead. “Claire…”

She waited, not letting him pretend that he had any intention of actually finishing that sentence. When the silence between them felt so thick he could feel it pressing on him, she sighed. “You were gonna go curl up in an alley somewhere, right?”

“No.”

Her voice sharpened. “What, then?”

He was exhausted, and starting to feel dizzy, and he couldn’t tell if the sick feeling was from blood loss or hunger because it had definitely been over twelve hours since he’d last eaten anything—no chance to try the spinach soup Claire had made, and it honestly didn’t smell appealing anyway—and his whole body hurt as if from phantom injuries. And Foggy was listening, and probably thinking Claire was stupid even to try, probably thinking Matt was helpless to change. And Claire, she was worried and upset and disappointed in him, and definitely just as tired as he was. The last thing he wanted right now was to try to explain himself.

He closed his eyes. “Can we…can we talk about this later?”

He felt weak and pathetic for even asking.

“I don’t think we can,” she said.

“I wasn’t thinking, Claire. I didn’t _have_ a plan, I just…”

“Just what?”

His eyes stung, and it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that _this_ was the thing that made him…emotional, but he hated it. He closed his eyes tighter. “I couldn’t risk hurting you, all right?”

He was so focused on himself, on keeping his breathing even and not letting his hands shake or the tears spill out, that she actually caught him off-guard when she set her hand on his shoulder. It was such a small touch, and gone almost as soon as he felt it as she got back to work on Foggy.

He shouldn’t have dragged either of them into this, shouldn’t have gone out into that rain, shouldn’t have let himself get so hacked to pieces in the first place.

“Matt,” she murmured at last, speaking quietly with her face aimed down at Foggy’s wound. “Not letting me help you when you’re in pain _is_ hurting me.”

Not compared to the kind of damage he could do if he lost control around her, just for a second. Which he’d always known, but he’d—foolishly—never thought that was much of a possibility. He got angry, yeah, but he dealt with that at night, and he could _never_ turn that against Claire. And in all the times she’d healed him before, he’d never left a mark on her no matter how deeply he might dig his fingernails into his own flesh.

But tonight was unprecedented.

Foggy

Shockingly, it didn’t look like Claire was getting through to Matt. Foggy thought she was optimistic even to try. Then again, she’d only known Matt for a few years now. Foggy had known him for over a decade. And in all that time, he’d learned one startlingly consistent truth about Matt: he influenced other people, got them to give up elevators and free bagels and ergonometric chairs. He changed other people—they didn’t change him.

Claire finally finished the stitches and Foggy tugged his shirt down without looking at the creepy black threads winding in and out of his skin. He could only hope the accelerated pain would be gone before the anesthesia wore off. “I think you were even faster than the nurses the first time around,” he said.

She pulled off her gloves with a _snap_. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Matt clicked off the flashlight. He looked smaller than usual as he slunk across the room to the nearest chair, curling up on it and shrinking under the weight of her glare.

Foggy sighed, trying not to move too much. Stitches sucked. Did Matt really flip around with them in? Why couldn’t he just _rest?_

“Done being the hero for a while?” Claire asked.

It took Foggy an embarrassing amount of time to realize she was talking to _him_. “Uh…I think so, yeah.” What was his next injury? Oh, yeah, that time he’d gotten shot in DA Reyes’ office. That was gonna be _super_ fun to relive. Too bad they only had, like, a thousand of Matt’s injuries to go through first. “You should really be asking him, though,” he said, jerking his chin at his best friend. “Right, Matt?”

No answer.

Foggy sat up straighter, grimacing at the pull of the stitches. “Matt?”

Matt blinked his eyes open lethargically. “What?”

Claire’s eyebrows pinched together with suspicion. “You okay?”

“What? Yeah. Just…really tired.”

Foggy stifled a yawn. “Definitely time for a nap.” For all of them, at this point. What time was it anyway?

Matt laughed quietly. “I’ll get you some water,” he said, starting to stand up. Foggy was busy thinking about how often Matt opted for _drinking water_ when what he needed was to sleep for five hours, so he almost didn’t notice when Matt swayed and crumpled back down onto the chair with a weak little noise of confusion.

Claire was all over him in an instant. “What happened? What’s hurt?”

“Not hurt,” he mumbled, his head lolling back against the couch. “Just dizzy. Stood up too fast.”

“How’s your head?” Claire’s fingers pushed through his hair, looking for cuts or bumps or whatever.

His eyes closed again, maybe at her touch or maybe because of something more insidious. “M’not hurt, Claire, really.”

That was a bald-faced lie, but Foggy could begrudgingly acknowledge that Matt might not be, right at this second, _newly_ hurt.

But Claire was not at all soothed, and kept running her hands over his body, hunting for injuries. “Then how’d you get so dizzy you _can’t stand up?_ ”

“I can stand up,” Matt protested, and started to prove it. He promptly undercut his own argument by staggering. Foggy and Claire between them managed to keep him upright, but his eyes fluttered closed and his head flopped forward against his chest.

Foggy shifted to support him, only to gulp at the temperature of Matt’s skin. Cool to the touch. “Um…Claire?”

“Blood loss,” she said tersely.

“No, no,” Matt murmured.

Foggy and Claire ignored him, focusing on trying to get him back on the couch. Not as easy as you’d think; Matt wasn’t a big guy, but he might as well have been made out of bricks. Muscle mass and all that. By the time they got him onto the couch, he’d turned into an unresponsive lump, a life-sized doll. All limp, heavy limbs and shallow breathing.

Not unlike after Nobu.

“He’s out?” Foggy asked in a whisper. As if Matt couldn’t hear it, if he were awake. As if they didn’t _want_ Matt to be awake.

“Yeah,” Claire said tersely.

“At least he can’t hurt himself,” Foggy pointed out. It wasn’t much of a silver lining (it was, like, dull gray lining if anything), but it was the best he could come up with.

Claire did not look encouraged. She was chewing on her fingernails, eyes flicking over Matt’s body.

“What?” Foggy asked.

“I’m just anticipating.” At his perplexed look, she ran her hand through her hair, sighed, and elaborated. “The injuries heal, but the blood that he’s lost doesn’t regenerate. And…and he’s lost a lot of blood already, really fast. But we’re not at the worst of it, not yet. And I don’t know exactly where we are on his timeline. Somehow, I’m not thinking he’ll have time to recover before…” Her expression darkened. “Well, you know. You were there.”

Nobu.

She seemed to come to a decision. “Can you hold down the fort for an hour?”

“An _hour?_ ” Foggy yelped. A lot could happen in an hour. A _lot_.

“He’ll need a blood transfusion. I can steal some from the hospital. Or…” She glanced down at Matt again. “Or we could take him there.”

“He’ll wake up.”

“Not…not if I knock him out. Shouldn’t be hard to do, and he’ll still be spacey when he wakes up. Too spacy to throw a fit, maybe.” She wet her lips. “I could use his oxy.”

“What?” Foggy squawked.

She looked slightly indignant. “I mean, if he prefers it to morphine. Look, this isn’t exactly a normal situation here.”

Foggy shook his head. “I have another idea,” he said slowly, “although he may not like it.”

“An idea that Matt doesn’t like is probably a good one,” she muttered. “What is it?”

“Well…there’s someone else we can call.”

Maggie

She was on her knees in her bedroom, face tipped up towards the window and the dawn light. Scripture said that God’s mercies were knew every morning. It was hard to believe that, sometimes.

The beginning of her prayer was easy enough: worshipping God for who He was, asking Him to open her eyes to the needs of the world. From there, she moved on to praying for people in her life. The new priest, her fellow nun whose young daughter was suffering, one of the parishioners who needed a fresh start in life. But as soon as she tried to pray for Matthew, the words died on her tongue.

It turned out that mending their relationship was a lot harder during the day-to-day than it was in the wake of Fisk’s cruelty and the loss of Father Lantom.

He’d said he wanted her help. He just hadn’t asked for it since. And she didn’t know if she should respect those boundaries or try to make good on her promise to finally be present in his life.

“Please,” she finally said, trusting that God would understand what she couldn’t put into words.

At that moment, her phone started buzzing on her dresser. When his name flashed across the screen of her phone, she thought this might be her answer. “Hello?” she asked breathlessly.

“Is this Sister Maggie?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Her heart plummeted even as she realized that, no, his voice wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. This was…Foggy Nelson. Her son’s law partner. Her son’s _friend_.

She realized belatedly that he’d asked a question. “Yes,” she said quickly. “This is she. Why, um, why do you have Matthew’s phone?”

“Long story,” Foggy said. “Actually, not super long, but really stupid. You know that alien rain that makes everyone relive all their previous injuries? Yeah, the one that someone like Matt should not go out in _no matter what?_ ”

Maggie closed her eyes. “Is he okay?”

“That depends on whether our friend Claire can get him a blood transfusion,” Foggy said, sounding bizarrely casual about the nightmarish scene he’d just relayed to her. “But while she’s gone, we need someone with some medical expertise, and the only other person we know who both knows how to put in stitches and knows about Matt’s little secret is you. So…so if it’s not too much trouble…?”

“I’m coming,” Maggie said immediately, leaving her room and heading for the basement where the medical supplies were kept. “Did…did he ask for me, then?”

“Oh, no, he’s unconscious.”

She blinked and stopped in the middle of the stairs. Again, not so much at the words but at the casual tone. “ _What?_ ”

“Don’t worry,” Foggy said quickly. “It’s been like this for, uh…” There was a sound like he was covering the phone with his hand, then his muffled voice saying, “How long, Claire?”

A pause.

“Six hours,” he reported.

Ah. So they’d been up all night fighting to keep Matthew alive. She sent a silent prayer towards heaven, asking for strength. “I’m on my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Sister Maggie! But also, LadyMaigrey recommended bringing Jessica in, which is a DELICIOUS idea, so keep your eyes open!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a BEAST and all these characters get stuff wrong, but here, have a tangled mess of people trying to help our sweet trainwreck of a hero. (And I call him a trainwreck knowing Sister Maggie would be berating me for it.)

Maggie

She’d never been to her own son’s apartment. She was trying very hard not to think about that. Foggy opened the door, which was a relief. She at least recognized him. Claire, however, was a woman she’d only heard of, though Matthew was nothing short of glowing whenever he spoke about her.

(Glowing, and clearly convinced that she was too good for him. A dynamic that struck Maggie as unhealthy, but she probably had years to go before she earned the right to give him relationship advice. As if she was even qualified.)

“How is he?” she whispered, on the off-chance that Matthew wouldn’t hear her.

“Still unconscious,” Foggy reported, holding the door open. “Glad you’re here. Claire’ll be back in a bit, she just left to…steal blood, I think.”

Maggie smiled. She liked Foggy, and she kept liking him more the more that she learned about his history with Matthew.

Foggy held the door open wider. “You…you know you can come in, right?”

“Yes, sorry.” Maggie quickly stepped past him, the moment feeling oddly anticlimactic. The hallway looked…sparse. Foolish to expect him to have pictures, but shouldn’t he have _something_ besides the little table on which she set her purse?

“He’s just in the living room,” Foggy said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder as he locked up. He must assume she knew where it was, that she’d been here before. Although there was really only one way to go. She headed up the hall, trying not to look as out of place as she felt.

Rounding the corner, she saw him immediately, laid out on the couch under a blanket. Her stomach flipped. He looked as still and peaceful as a body whose soul had moved on, and his skin was white enough to sell the story. She hurried closer, forgetting to be quiet or dignified in her need to see the rise and fall of his chest. She set her hand on his mouth just to feel his warm breaths.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, just reassuring herself that he was alive. But she snapped back to herself when she heard Foggy clear his throat. Spinning around, she saw him gazing sadly at her.

“Yeah,” he said. “I hate it when he looks like that.”

Maggie swiftly wiped down the front of her dress. “He’ll recover. God knows he’s been through worse.”

Foggy’s eyes darted to Matthew, as if to verify that he was still unconscious. Then he set his shoulders back. “God did this to him, right?”

Maggie blinked. “Well, He…He allowed it to happen.”

Foggy made a low sound, a muted scoff. He rubbed at the back of his neck. “’Cause, I’m just saying, I’ve been here since the beginning, and the shit he’s been through…”

“We’re never promised an easy life on this earth,” Maggie murmured. “The effects of humanity’s sin are so twisted we can’t even see it clearly. Trying to define its limits is like a fish trying to define water.”

Foggy sighed. “Yeah, forget I said anything. Don’t know why I brought it up.”

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, although she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for. Maybe for sweeping into this room and philosophizing as if her son had invited her, when he hadn’t.

“Doesn’t matter.” Foggy headed into the kitchen. He looked like he wanted a distraction. “You want a…uh, not beer, right? He’s got…water. And, like, half a cup of apple juice.” He withdrew the nearly-empty bottle. “What grown man drinks apple juice?”

“Jack liked it,” Maggie admitted, surprising herself. “He’d drink it and say he didn’t need any more fruits or veggies. Water’s fine, thank you.”

“I could make tea,” Foggy offered, and this time it felt like an olive branch.

“Tea would be great,” Maggie said, relieved. She sat on the nearest chair and tried to surreptitiously take in Matthew’s apartment. The rest of it was technically as sparse as the hallway, but it felt different. Lived-in, although she couldn’t put her finger on what made the difference.

There was so much she still didn’t know about him.

Foggy was still busy in the kitchen, making tea with some kind of complicated method that involved neither a teapot nor a microwave, when Maggie heard the sound of the front door unlocking. She stood up (so as not to seem like she was making herself too comfortable in a place where she hadn’t been invited and was possibly still not wanted).

And a woman came around the corner from the front hall, laden with a heavy duffel bag. She was beautiful, but the first thing that struck Maggie was how drained she looked. Tendrils of sweaty hair clung to the side of her face and she was breathing heavily, as if she’d run up the stairs. Maggie supposed it made sense; even with a stranger sitting in the room, the woman’s eyes darted straight to Matthew before even glancing at Maggie.

This must be Claire.

Maggie gathered herself and stepped forward, extending her hand. “Hello. I’m Maggie.

“ _Sister_ Maggie,” Foggy’s voice corrected from the kitchen. “She’s a nun, Claire, don’t swear in front of her!”

Claire’s hand was calloused to the touch, which somehow surprised Maggie. (It shouldn’t—the woman was a nurse, she put her hands to work night and day. But Matthew always spoke of her with such reverence, as if she were above such earthly things as callouses.) She shook Maggie’s hand quickly, then brushed past her. “I’m Claire. I look forward to talking, but I need to keep our boy alive.”

 _Our boy._ Maggie stayed out of the way. “Of course. And thank you, I can’t thank you enough for…” She trailed off. Claire didn’t look like she wanted to be distracted.

The nurse was already kneeling knelt beside the couch. She pulled something from the duffel bag; Maggie’s heart beat faster when she saw that it was a bag of red blood.

“You know his blood type,” she said stupidly.

Claire smirked dryly. “He told me his blood type before he told me his name.”

Well, then.

Working deftly, Claire sterilized a needle and slipped it into a vein on Matthew’s arm, then pressed two fingers under his chin to monitor his pulse. After a minute or two, she finally sat back to catch her breath. She glanced over her shoulder at Maggie. “So, is this a good time to thank you? He says you kept him alive. In…more ways than one.”

Caught off-guard by the sincerity of her statement, Maggie struggled to come up with a response. Claire wet her lips and turned back to Matthew, and the window seemed to close. Silence fell over the room. Foggy wordlessly got Claire a water bottle.

After about five minutes, Maggie ventured to speak. “How’s he doing?”

“Stupid as ever,” Claire said stiffly, in a voice that Maggie thought she recognized. It was the voice Maggie had heard enough in her own head, telling her _she_ was the stupid one for thinking she could magic away Matthew’s pain. Maggie’s heart clenched in sympathy.

“And before you ask,” Foggy said, coming up behind Maggie and offering a chipped mug of citrus-smelling tea, “yes, we’ve told him.”

“Told him what?” Maggie tried to keep her voice neutral as she accepted the warm mug. “That he’s stupid?”

“Only like a hundred times,” Foggy said, shrugging. “Not that we’re getting through to him.”

Something about that rubbed Maggie the wrong way. “In my experience,” she said dryly, “people respond better to encouragement than to derision.”

Claire turned around, sitting on the floor leaning against the edge of the couch, and rolled her eyes. “You must literally have the patience of a saint if you think you could deal with all his injuries for _six hours_ without calling him an idiot.”

Maggie felt a flash of defensive anger on behalf of her son. She dropped her gaze to her mug, catching rising steam in her face. “I’m not saying it’s realistic.”

“What are you saying?” Foggy asked.

Maggie glanced up. “That maybe it’s unrealistic to expect him to respond well when…when he’s in pain, and you’re making him feel like he brought it all on himself.”

“He _did_ ,” Foggy muttered. Claire’s face had turned stony.

“He did,” Maggie agreed, tightening her grip on her mug. “But if I were him, I can’t say that I’d invite much care if I knew it would come with sighs and rolling eyes and muttered insults!”

She hadn’t meant to raise her voice. But this was her _son_ , and she still remembered the stifled agony in his voice when he’d explained why he would rather let his friends think he was dead. There had to be more to that, an entire complicated history that she wasn’t qualified to even try to sort out, but she still suspected that it wasn’t simply that Matthew had thought they were better off without him—he must have not believed they’d _want_ him back.

She’d thought at the time that it was purely his depression speaking. But maybe his feeling of being too burdensome to be bothered with wasn’t solely the result of his broken mental health.

She narrowed her eyes at his friends. “Listen. I didn’t use kid gloves when I was taking care of him either.” And she resisted the urge to add that he’d probably been a lot harder to handle then than he was now, between his crisis of faith and his obvious depression. “But I still tried to…to _affirm_ him, whenever I could, and I freely admitted that he deals with things every night that I couldn’t come up with in my nightmares.”

Foggy threw up his hands. “You think we don’t do that?”

“I think it might be a little undercut each time you call him stupid,” Maggie snapped. “And now he has to go from getting berated by you for his choices one night to sitting across from you at the office the next morning. How is he supposed to think you can respect him in the second setting if you don’t respect him in the first?”

“If he can’t tell the difference,” Foggy started to say hotly, but he broke off as Claire suddenly shoved herself to her feet. The next second, she’d disappeared down the front hall. “…Claire?”

The front door opened and closed.

Maggie felt a stab of horror. She hadn’t meant to drive off Claire. Setting aside the fact that Matthew might well die without her since Maggie wasn’t sure that her own experience would be enough to handle what was still to come, Matthew would never forgive her for chasing away the woman he loved.

Maggie looked guiltily at Foggy, who was scowling at the floor. “I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’ll bring her back, I’ll—”

“She’ll be back,” Foggy said flatly, looking at Matt. “None of us can stay away very long.” His voice sharpened. “But you shouldn’t have said all that. Not to us. And especially not to her.”

Oh, because clearly the way he and Claire treated Matthew worked so well? But Maggie bit her tongue for once. “I should apologize anyway.” If not for what she’d said then for how she’d said it. And for the things she hadn’t said but should have.

Foggy gave her a pointed look, then shrugged. “Whatever, knock yourself out. I’ll call you guys if he wakes up.”

Nodding rigidly, Maggie hastened down the hall, wondering how far she’d have to go to find the nurse. She was prepared to run through the streets if she had to, but instead she found Claire sitting at the top of the stairs with her head in her hands.

Maggie approached carefully. “Claire?”

Her voice was muffled and thin—she was crying. Or she had been. “Really don’t wanna talk to you right now.”

Maggie sat down anyway, but she sat against the wall at the other end of the landing, giving Claire as much room as she could. “I’m sorry. You’ve been taking care of him for hours straight; it’s not appropriate for me to sweep in and start telling you how to—”

“That’s not it,” Claire interrupted raggedly. “That’s not the problem.”

Maggie said nothing.

“The problem is that…you’re not completely wrong.” Claire lifted her head from her hands but didn’t turn around to face Maggie, apparently staring unseeingly down the stairs. “It’s just that doing…doing what he does, it’s one of the most important things in the world to him. He doesn’t see the injuries the way I do. He probably never will. And I knew that, even before we started this whole…” She waved her hand, a frustrated gesture which Maggie took to be referring to their relationship. “But I thought we’d have more time to figure out how to handle all the shit that happens to him, and then _this_ happened, and…”

“In fairness,” Maggie said softly, “I’m not sure that any conversation would’ve prepared you two for this.”

Claire didn’t respond directly to that; instead, her voice adopted a distant, almost dreamlike quality, like she was talking to no one in particular. “He wants me to be his girlfriend first and his nurse second. He wants me to flirt back when I’m stopping him from bleeding out, not lecture him.” She glanced sideways at Maggie. “And believe me, I _wish_ I could bite my tongue and just…put him together, and talk about how he needs to keep himself safe later. But the thing is, I know him. He doesn’t listen except when he’s hurt.”

Maggie bit her lip. “Does he listen then?”

Claire’s heavy sigh was enough of an answer. “I…” Her voice trembled. “I thought this would work, Maggie. I really did. But I think this whole mess is just showing what’s been true all along. I value his safety more than the city, and he values the city more than his safety. We’ll never agree on that.”

“Do you have to agree?”

“Yes!” Claire whirled around, eyes glinting with moisture. “Because I _can’t do_ what you’re talking about. I can’t… _muzzle_ myself while I’m trying to keep him _alive_ in case I say something that hurts his fragile masculine ego!”

Maggie blinked.

“Sorry. No, I’m not. I’m really not.” Claire slumped back against the railing of the stairs. “I don’t know.”

Maggie took a deep breath. Matthew was going to be furious with her if he heard she’d said this. “I don’t have the answers, but it’s clear to me that what the two of you are doing now isn’t working. It’s not a healthy balance between you. If…if you keep trying to force it, someone will get hurt.”

Claire closed her eyes; a single tear ran down her cheek.

“Someone will get hurt worse,” Maggie amended quietly. “But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe this is the wake-up call you needed. Now that you know how serious this…this problem is, now you can talk about it with all your cards on the table. There’s no reason not to be honest, at this point.”

“When,” Claire murmured, “are we supposed to do that? While he’s bleeding out with a tear in his stomach? While he’s unconscious because he was shot in the head? While he’s unconscious from getting buried under a _building?_ _When?_ ”

Maggie’s stomach twisted at the list. “…I don’t know.”

“Yeah.” Claire pushed herself off the railing and got to her feet. “That’s what I thought.” She headed for the door to 6A, paused, and looked back over her shoulder, seeming to struggle with herself for a second. “For what it’s worth, Maggie…I’m glad you at least care enough about him to say all that. It couldn’t have been easy.” She shrugged, and the motion already looked defeated. “Maybe having you here will buy him and me time. I don’t know.”

She slipped into the apartment.

Maggie gave herself just a second to sit, hands clasped together. She whispered a prayer for wisdom and for forgiveness. Then she got up, and followed Claire into the war zone.


	12. Chapter 12

Matt

The world was soft for once. He was back in his old house with his dad. In his old bed. It was even more comfortable than he remembered. He could see. Sunlight lit up the room, streaming through the window and warming him as it pooled on the dark green comforter of his bed.

He nestled deeper among the pillows and blankets, closing his eyes but tilting his face towards the window so the world turned reddish from sunlight against his eyelids. His body felt heavy, but in a good way. Like he was a second from falling back asleep. But he’d rather stay awake, in this drowsy in-between state. He didn’t want to miss a single moment of peace.

He smelled toast and bacon and he heard his dad in the kitchen, moving stuff around. Making breakfast. Talking. Laughing. Who was he talking to?

A woman’s voice answered him, light and happy and more carefree than he’d ever heard it. But he _had_ heard it before.

His stomach flipped.

Maggie.

Despite his senses, he couldn’t make out their words. Just the distant hum of conversation. And laughter. Maggie was laughing, too.

He didn’t want to fall asleep and miss any of this.

But he must have, he must have slipped back into oblivion because the next thing he knew he was blinking awake to a world of blackness. He shivered despite the blanket draped over him. His whole body ached, he kind of needed to use the bathroom, and he smelled blood. Plenty of his own, but also someone else’s.

Claire was perched on the edge of the couch, leaning over him; he could tell by her body heat and the scent of her shampoo and sweat. “You back with us?”

“Whu,” he mumbled.

He heard the smile in her voice. “Welcome back.”

Forcing his eyes open, he tried to sit up. Couldn’t manage it, rendering her hand on his shoulder to stop him unnecessary. “Wha’appened?”

“You lost too much blood too fast.” The smile faded from her voice. “I should’ve thought of that sooner, Matt, I’m so sorry.”

She of all people didn’t need to apologize. He shook his head weakly. “But what…?”

“You passed out. I got you a transfusion.”

That explained the smell of blood, then. Still, he was confused, although he wasn’t sure why. He forced himself to concentrate, and realized that Maggie’s scent seemed to have followed him out of the dream. He must really be out of it, if he couldn’t even tell the difference between…

“How are you feeling?” The back of Claire’s hand rested against the side of his cheek. Like he was a little kid who was sick. It was so unusually gentle that it distracted him for a second.

He made himself focus on his body enough to find an answer for her. “Tired. Dizzy. Sore.”

“Really?” He could hear amusement in her voice, but also something sweet and almost flirty. “Not _fine?_ ”

He rolled his eyes, but he was the tiniest bit pleased at her reaction to his honesty.

“Your mom made sure you were okay while I was gone,” she went on.

He snapped to alertness. “What?”

On the other side of the room, Maggie’s heartrate sped up.

Cold rushed through his body. Not a dream. _She was here._ But Dad was really gone, and it was almost thirty years later, and… _ow_ , his body really hurt. Like he’d been hit by a wooden beam. Or five. He sluggishly tried to remember his timeline. If Foggy had just gotten stabbed, Matt must’ve been fighting Vladimir.

He swallowed. The guy had been evil. He made his living exploiting women and children. But then he’d _died_ , and Matt had just walked away, and….

He sat up and the room spun. He caught Claire’s hand when she started to pull away. “What, you asked her here?”

The amusement was gone from Claire’s voice, replaced by tension. “You needed help, Matt.”

“I didn’t need _her!_ ” he blurted out, and sensed Maggie flinch across the room. He hadn’t said it to hurt her, though. But he wasn’t supposed to need _anyone_ , Stick always said so, and he definitely couldn’t afford to need her.

(Because he _had_ needed her, so long ago, and she hadn’t been there.)

Claire folded her arms across her chest. “How many other people do you know with any kind of medical experience who also won’t be shocked when blind Matt Murdock gets basically gutted with a fishhook?”

“It wasn’t a fishhook,” Matt said flatly.

“Because _that’s_ the salient point,” Foggy muttered under his breath. He was hovering back behind one of the armchairs, out of the line of fire, shifting his weight uncertainly.

Uncertainty wasn’t an emotion Matt was used to associating with Foggy. He didn’t like it.

Claire wrapped her arms even tighter around herself. “You need to accept that you need more help.”

 _More help than I can give you,_ Matt finished silently for her, filling in the blanks of what she wouldn’t say. It was a bitter irony: if he knew for sure that she wanted Maggie here for _her_ sake and not for _his_ , because _Claire_ needed help, it would be easier to accept Maggie’s presence. But she’d never admit that.

And in the meantime, everything in him recoiled at the words _you need_. He didn’t need.

He was trying to figure out how to argue when he was hit by—oh, he didn’t even know at this point. Something. He gritted his teeth as skin split on his arm. Probably wasn’t even enough to bleed through his sweatshirt, definitely not a big enough deal to bother Claire about, but it just…it still hurt, and it was annoying and distracting, and he was still _so tired_.

“Matthew.” That was Maggie’s voice from behind him, neutral and yet as infuriatingly soothing as always. “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.”

He didn’t want her to leave, he wanted her to never have been here in the first place. There was a difference. He turned slowly towards her, letting her see his face even though it made no difference to him. “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” she asked very quietly. He wasn’t sure if she’d meant him to hear it, couldn’t quite tell if she actually knew the extent of his hearing. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d heard something she hadn’t meant for him.

“It’s _fine_.” What was one more pair of worried eyes watching him get torn up and put back together again? They should just call Karen at this point. Or Jessica Jones, she could probably use a good laugh.

“Buddy,” Foggy said tentatively, clearly not buying it.

Well, Matt wasn’t trying that hard to be convincing. Why bother? No one in this room was actually asking his opinion.

Foggy

Maybe bringing Maggie in had been a bad idea.

But at least it was a better idea than dragging Matt to a hospital. Right? Lesser of two evils, or whatever?

Maggie clearly didn’t feel that way. She looked pale, almost as pale as Matt, and that was saying something. They all stood there like they were in some kind of weird Mexican standoff. Then Maggie, ever the adult, took it upon herself to turn and head for the hallway.

Claire darted to intercept her. Matt rubbed his hand over his face but didn’t otherwise move. His turned, however, as if to catch the hushed words Maggie and Claire were exchanging in the hallway.

Grimacing, Foggy stood up, figuring the last thing his best friend needed right now was to eavesdrop on his girlfriend arguing with his mom about how badly he needed them. “Buddy.”

“What,” Matt said dully.

“They’re just trying to help, you know?”

His eyes raised towards the ceiling. “I know.”

“We just…” Foggy trailed off. Why was he so bad at this? He’d been great at cheering Matt up in law school. All it usually took were some bad jokes, maybe some crappy food and a few half-masked compliments (yeah, Matt might pretend not to believe them, but he couldn’t hide the way he lit up when Foggy told him he was smart, or hot, or _good_ ).

But this whole world, the world of Daredevil, was so alien and so full of hidden landmines (landmines that didn’t _have_ to be hidden, but Matt would rather guard them with his _life_ ) that Foggy didn’t know what to do or say that wouldn’t end up with them all getting blown up somehow. Easier to stay quiet and let Claire fight the battles.

Foggy just wished there was more he could do to actually help.

“They’re coming back,” Matt said curtly, interrupting Foggy’s thoughts, drifting towards the couch with his hand outstretched so he could fold up the blanket he’d been nestled under just moments ago. And sure enough, Claire and Maggie appeared out of the hallway moments later and stood there, watching with their faces set in almost identical expressions of stoic determination.

Matt’s head twitched towards them, and Maggie gave a small nod, and apparently that was that. Matt headed into the kitchen, skimming his hand along his table and counter like maybe he wasn’t quite as sure of where he was in space as he was pretending.

“Water,” he said, probably answering Foggy’s breathing change or whatever. He opened the fridge; white light bathed over him, highlighting all the still-glistening bloodstains on his sweatshirt. He withdrew a water bottle and unscrewed the cap, but sighed exasperatedly instead of taking a drink. “I can _feel_ you all watching me. I’m fine.”

Foggy shot a startled look at Claire and Maggie to see them both guiltily averting their gazes. Foggy looked back at Matt to see if he really could tell where everyone’s eyelines were—and watched Matt’s entire body seize up. Matt clenched the water bottle in his fist, spilling water everywhere, then tilted and went down like a fallen tree, catching the side of his head on the corner of his counter as he crashed to the ground.

“Matt!” Foggy raced across the apartment, but Claire was nimbler and skidded to her knees besides Matt, who didn’t get up or even try to keep Claire from running her hands over his body. Instead, he just groaned weakly as he slowly, slowly rolled over onto his back. Oh, and…there was a wet patch on the front of his sweatpants that…wasn’t water. Foggy swallowed, feeling his own face heat up with second-hand embarrassment. He couldn’t see any other injuries, though—except for the newly-acquired head wound and the nice bruise blossoming across the side of his face where he’d hit the floor—and that was a relief, but failed to explain what had caused this new nightmare in the first place.

Maggie and Claire were apparently unfazed; Maggie wormed into place next to Claire, who was still probing at Matt’s torso, trying to find an injury. Maggie, however, gently touched a damp paper towel to the source of the blood darkening Matt’s hair. He closed his eyes at the contact, and neither leaned into her touch nor pulled away. Foggy wasn’t sure what to make of that.

Claire took over, then, apparently not having found anything of note on the rest of Matt’s body. She maneuvered him half-upright, leaning him against the base of the counter. His eyebrows went up in pain or dizziness or both.

“Open your eyes,” she said softly. He complied, and even Foggy could see the difference between his pupils. Sighing, she rested her forehead against his for a second. “You want an aspirin or anything?”

He started to shake his head; stopped because apparently that hurt. “No,” he said instead, to no one’s shock.

Claire sat back with an annoyed huff that only partly masked her worry. “What just happened?”

Grimacing, Matt didn’t respond right away. His mouth moved silently like he was trying to find the right words. Finally, he simply slurred, “Taser.”

Claire rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Right. _Taser_.”

But Matt didn’t offer her a charming, crooked grin or anything; he kept his eyes aimed at the floor. Foggy’s best friend senses tingled even more because Matt was shutting down right in front of his eyes. Retreating into himself in a way he hadn’t since talking about his first injuries from the nuns and his creepy mentor. And he didn’t even seem to have noticed that he’d wet himself (although, to be fair, the water bottle had basically exploded everywhere). “How’d you end up getting Tased, buddy?” Foggy asked gently.

Matt shook his head, like he’d already forgotten that was a bad idea. From the look on his face, he instantly regretted the motion. “Stupid mistake.”

Claire, bless her, finally picked up on the vibe. “What kind of mistake?”

“I was distracted,” Matt mumbled. “M’fine.”

Yeah, neither Claire nor Foggy were dumb enough to buy that. They exchanged a glance, then sat there without speaking. Waiting him out. Maggie did the same, although it was hard to tell if that was intentional or if she was just sticking to her strategy of silence in general.

Finally, Matt heaved a sigh of forced exasperation, like if he acted like they were making a mountain out of a molehill they’d forget that he’d worked so hard to dodge the issue in the first place. “Stick came back, s’all.”

Foggy’s mouth fell open. That—that meant Stick must’ve come while Matt was Daredeviling, which meant Stick must’ve come back just a few years ago. Suddenly, Stick was not merely some boogeyman from Matt’s childhood.

Claire figured out words before Foggy did. “Your teacher _tased_ you?”

“Stick didn’t,” Matt corrected a little sharply despite the still-present slurring, like that was an unfair thing to accuse of the man who’d broken Matt’s arm when he was eleven. “Olwsley, I got distracted, it wasn’t Stick who…” He trailed off, one of his hands lifting absently to explore the blood on his head.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Claire said, redirecting his hand to his side. But her assertive tone didn’t match the look she gave Foggy and Maggie—tired and strangely helpless. “Guys,” she said in a lower voice. Not that he wouldn’t hear it, if he was paying attention. “Someone should…help him clean up. I’d do it, but, um…”

But even though Matt was out of it right now, he’d be humiliated once he realized what she’d done. Honestly, Foggy figured he’d be upset enough even if Claire were only a nurse and not his girlfriend. Throw in their budding relationship as an aggravating factor, though, and for once Foggy wouldn’t begrudge his best friend for wanting to leave Claire out of it.

He really regretted wishing for a chance to be more useful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The question I ask myself: how can we take the canon injuries and make them WORSE?


	13. Chapter 13

Foggy

“I’ll handle it,” he said. “We lived together long enough that there’s not much mystery left between us.”

Matt’s head slowly lifted. “What…?”

“C’mon, buddy, on your feet.” Foggy got his arm around Matt and started helping him up. Fortunately or unfortunately, he’d gotten pretty used to this since finding out about Daredevil.

“I can do it m’self,” Matt protested, doing his best impression of a three-year-old.

Yep. Definitely still out of it.

They shuffled together into the bathroom; Foggy closed the door behind them with his foot and flicked the light on. His best friend was a mess. Okay. Prioritize. Better to take care of the still-dripping blood first, probably? That way, with any luck, Matt would be a smidge more with it to deal with…the other part.

So Foggy got to work. Wetting a washcloth, he returned to gently dab at the blood on the side of the other man’s face. Matt flinched, his hand half coming up. It wasn’t a particularly scary move, and Foggy easily caught his wrist, lowering it back to his side.

“Easy, buddy,” he said softly. “It’s just me. You’re safe. You don’t have to worry about anything right now, okay?”

Matt’s eyes closed and he tipped forwards until his forehead rested against Foggy’s. He gave a small, weak sigh.

Foggy’s heart clenched and he couldn’t decide whether it was from Matt’s uncharacteristic show of vulnerability or the weight of his trust. Biting his lip, he focused on cleaning away the blood until the rag was stained pinkish, trying not to think about what it meant that it took a literal head wound for Matt to stop trying to run, to hide, and just let himself be cared for.

Shaking his head to scatter the questions he didn’t have answers to, Foggy cleared his throat and rubbed his hands nervously together. “All right, dude. Can you, um…” What was the best way to do this? Foggy wasn’t keen on leaving Matt alone for any stretch of time, but he also knew his best friend would probably prefer that the, uh, smell spread to as few parts of his apartment as possible. “Can you sit right here while I get you clean stuff?”

Matt nodded dizzily, but that could mean anything at this point, really.

Well, Foggy was just gonna have to move fast, then. But first things first. Hands on Matt’s shoulders, he pushed him back against the wall and down a little, and Matt slid compliantly to the floor. It was like manipulating a puppet.

Foggy _hated_ it.

“One sec,” he whispered. “Stay right there, okay? Don’t try to get up. Understand? Wait for me.”

Another lazy nod.

Ugh. Foggy squeezed Matt’s shoulder, then darted out the other door into the bedroom. Between the fact that Matt’s organizational habits hadn’t changed in all the time that Foggy had known him and the fact that Foggy had crashed here more than once after he and Matt got their own apartments, Foggy knew exactly where to go to find fresh boxers and sweatpants. Grabbed a clean sweatshirt while he was at it, too—the heavy smell of blood was making him sick and Matt couldn’t be any happier with it. Scurrying back to the bathroom, he breathed a sigh of relief to find Matt right where he’d left him.

Matt’s voice floated up from the floor. “…Fog?”

He sounded so _young_.

“Just me,” Foggy said, fighting to sound casual. “I brought you some, um, clean clothes.”

Matt’s forehead creased in confusion. Crap. Had he still not put it together?

“Uh…” At a loss what else to do, Foggy handed over the clothes. Matt’s hand came up, fingers running over the fabric. Foggy wasn’t sure what clicked for him, exactly, but the dawning realization on his face was unmistakable.

Foggy wet his lips. “Yeah. Maybe a shower first?”

Matt was nodding before the question was finished, blinking hard and swallowing visibly, his expression crumbling fast. _Crap._ His hands planted on the floor and shoved himself upwards—too suddenly. He stumbled and might’ve ended up with a second concussion if Foggy hadn’t ducked in and grabbed him. No sooner was Matt steady again then he was pulling away, keeping his flushed face turned away as much as he could.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Foggy said, for lack of anything better to say.

Matt didn’t answer, focusing on clumsily stripping. Foggy hovered awkwardly next to him, hands up, ready to catch him if he tripped. But Matt made it into the shower without incident. Not that Foggy felt any more comfortable with him in there. “Careful,” he kept saying.

A useless, broken record.

Matt

Matt leaned heavily against the side of the shower, catching most of the stream on his shoulder, working through the logistics of just…staying here forever. He’d smelled the ammonia, but between the new head wound and the ghost of Stick’s voice in his head, he hadn’t put it together. Now it was all he could think about.

 _It’s not how you hit the mat,_ his dad always said, but he’d generally been talking about literal, physical hits. Or maybe a bad week financially. Not…this kind of humiliation. How was anyone supposed to bounce back?

Growling at himself, Matt thrust his face under the hot water. He was just gonna have to figure it out. Because he _did_ need…ugh. He needed help, and he’d need plenty more before the day was over. No time for a pity party, couldn’t just tap out.

He wondered if, after he went back out there, he could just avoid talking for the next ten hours or so. Turn into nothing more than blood and bones, muscles and nerves. A body without a person attached. That’d be easier on everyone, wouldn’t it?

His head throbbed in time with his pulse, but he knew the churning in his gut was from more than just concussion-induced nausea.

He was such a failure.

Dad wanted him not to fight, but he went out every night hunting down an excuse to bloody up his fists.

Stick wanted him to be effective, but Matt had to take down the same roster of criminals every other month when the system spat them back out.

Foggy and Claire wanted him to just _not get hurt_ , and he couldn’t even manage that because most nights it felt like the pain was the only thing that justified his efforts.

Oh, and God, don’t forget God. Matt was definitely a lost cause to God by this point. Couldn’t control his worst impulses, got Father Lantom killed because he couldn’t stop Dex, and the reason he hadn’t been there in time was because he’d broken into Fisk’s hotel with the intent to kill.

Wretched failure.

He caught a new scent wafting in from the rest of the apartment. Chicken in red sauce, maybe? Something was sizzling in a pan. His stomach growled. Lowering his head, he focused on the sensation of warm water drumming against the back of his neck, soothing the tight muscles there.

All he wanted was to stay in here until he ran out of hot water, but he was probably pushing his luck as it was. Any minute, Foggy—or even Claire or Maggie, he wouldn’t put it past them—would come barging in to make sure he hadn’t passed out or something. (He _should_ be grateful. They were just concerned.) Shutting off the shower, Matt blinked water out of his eyes, pulled a towel down to wrap around himself, and stepped onto cold tile.

Foggy was waiting with an armful of clean clothes (the dirty stuff was gone and Matt hated the thought of Foggy, what, _doing his laundry_ for him, but he wasn’t about to draw attention to the situation by saying anything about it). Matt accepted them wordlessly, changing as quickly as possible (only lost his balance once; he mumbled his thanks when Foggy reached out to stabilize him). Water from his hair ran down the back of his neck to seep into his shirt. Unsure what else to do, and not willing to venture out into the open under Claire and Maggie’s (concerned? embarrassed? judgmental?) gazes, he sat down with his back pressed to the bathroom wall.

He heard Foggy’s breathing hitch as he was about to speak. “Thanks for helping me,” Matt said, cutting off whatever he didn’t want to hear.

Foggy nodded, like he was accepting that. But then—oh, no—then he started speaking anyway. “Matt,” he began softly. “You know it wasn’t your fault?”

“Which part?” Matt asked viciously—and stupidly. The last thing he really wanted was to hear Foggy spell it out.

Foggy paused, an auditory blink. “…All of it.”

Matt drew his knees up to his chest. “I knew Owlsley had a taser. I could hear it. Smell it. I should’ve been ready for it, but I just…I heard Stick coming, let myself get distracted.”

Foggy paused again, longer this time, like he was spending a long time choosing his words. “I think,” he said at last, “that if _I_ had someone like Stick in my life, and that guy showed up out of the blue after…how long was it, again?”

Even saying the number felt like admitting defeat. Would’ve been a smaller number if Matt hadn’t messed up. Or if he’d been good enough the first time around that Stick didn’t completely forget about him. “Twenty years,” he said, trying to sound neutral. He overcompensated; the words came out stiff and brittle.

Foggy shifted, sitting with his back to the wall next to Matt. “Yeah, well…I feel like anyone would be distracted, then, in your position.”

Nice of him to say it. But Matt was a warrior, heir of the Spartans, et cetera, et cetera. Getting _distracted_ wasn’t an excuse.

“Can I ask you something?” Foggy asked.

Matt tried not to grimace. “Sure.”

“Do you…just, do you see _any_ difference between what happened, when you were a kid, with, like, Stick and the nuns…and what happens when you’re Daredevil?”

Matt should stop gritting his teeth; it was making his headache worse. “There are plenty of differences.” And he hated that Foggy was insisting on lumping the nuns in with Stick. They were nothing alike.

“Then…why do you act like all the shit Stick and the nuns put you through was your fault?”

There it was again. Mostly, though, Matt was just confused. Possibly because of the concussion. He wasn’t entirely sure he knew what Foggy was even asking, let alone how to answer it.

Foggy, bless him, picked up on the fact that Matt was lost. “One sec,” he said, and then he got up in a whirl of motion. Matt wrinkled his nose at the pseudo-odorless scent of his own deodorant—Foggy must’ve used it after showering the rain off when he first got here hours ago—and didn’t try to figure out where Foggy was going. Stretching his senses beyond the bathroom was…not appealing.

He didn’t want to know what Maggie and Claire were saying in the living room, and he didn’t want to hear the horns blaring on the street outside as the day’s traffic started up. A few seconds later, Foggy had slipped back into the bathroom. Now Matt caught the scent of ink, and paper.

“Okay,” Foggy said, and Matt heard the paper brush against the bathroom floor as Foggy spread it out. He scribbled with the pen for a moment, then took Matt’s hand and ran his fingers over the indent. “Feel that? I admit, this probably isn’t the _best_ way to demonstrate this, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.”

Matt read the words _Stick and nuns_ on one half of the page, and _violent scary criminals_ on the other. Foggy had drawn a line between the two halves. Matt tilted his head questioningly.

“For the record,” Foggy said, “I realize Stick came back when you were an adult. But I’m putting _everything_ he did to you in the same category. Including getting tased because he distracted you, even if he wasn’t technically the one who tased you. You can disagree all you want, but that’s just how I see it.”

“I still don’t know where you’re going this,” Matt pointed out, leaning his head back against the wall. A nap sounded really good right now. Right here on the floor, ideally. He’d really rather just stay here indefinitely.

“I’ll show you.” Foggy drew on the paper more, a long, steady motion. He guided Matt’s hand to the paper again, until Matt realized that what he’d drawn was, in fact, a circle. Around _Stick and nuns_. “All of this? You were a kid, and everything that happened to you was done to you by people who were supposed to be taking care of you. So. Not your fault. Clear?”

“And…what about the other part?” Matt asked, even though the implication was obvious. But for some masochistic reason, he wanted to hear Foggy say it.

Foggy sighed deeply. “That’s…a mess. On the one hand, you’re being a hero. On the other, there are _lots_ of ways to be a hero that don’t involve you getting cut to pieces every night. So…the other half is a mix, I guess. But, if I’m being honest…I mostly think the other stuff is your fault. At least, you kinda ask for it.”

Matt nodded slowly. He’d suspected as much. He wanted to bristle at Foggy’s conclusion, but he honestly didn’t have the energy.

“So…” Foggy scooted a little closer. “What do you think?”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “You really want to know?”

Foggy sighed again, quieter this time. “You think I’ve got it backwards.”

Matt tried to figure out how to explain it in a way that Foggy would accept. It was probably a doomed effort. “When I was a kid…everything that happened to me, it was all because I’d done something wrong. Messed up.”

“You were a kid! And they _hit_ you!”

“Maybe they took it too far,” Matt acknowledged. The nuns, at least, had definitely been disproportionate in their responses to his failures. But what else could be expected from Stick, who’d never pretended like he was gonna treat Matt as anything other than a soldier? “But I wouldn’t have gotten hurt at all if I hadn’t…if I hadn’t done something wrong in the first place.” He could hear Foggy gearing up for an argument, so he hurried on: “But when I go out as Daredevil, I’m finally doing what I’m _supposed_ to do. I’m taking all my training and my senses and using them for good. And if I get hurt, it’s not always because I failed. Sometimes it’s just…inevitable. Part of the fight. You know?”

There were exceptions. Nobu, predominately. But for the most part, his logic held true: as Daredevil, he got hurt because he took on the world to help people. That pain wasn’t his fault.

He sighed. “I don’t expect you to agree with me,” he said tiredly. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Foggy always expected Matt to agree with _him_.

To his credit, Foggy didn’t say anything to that.

Matt tilted his head: Claire’s footsteps were approaching outside. He braced himself to stand up, knowing that this small reprieve on the floor of his bathroom was about to end.

Sure enough, an unobtrusive knock sounded on the door, more of a light tapping than anything. “You guys all right in there?” Claire asked, voice muffled.

The direction of Foggy’s breathing changed as he turned his head, and Matt was struck by the realization that Foggy was actually giving Matt the chance to answer. He was so surprised and touched that, instead of shrugging reflexively, he raised his voice a little and said, “Yeah, we’re good.”


	14. Chapter 14

Foggy

He couldn’t read heartbeats or anything, but he still didn’t _think_ Matt was lying when he said they were good. Still, he watched something masklike slide over his best friend’s face as Matt got unsteadily to his feet. For some reason, it made Foggy think of an actual mask and _easier if I walk it out_ , and a new round of alarm bells went off in Foggy’s head.

He raised his voice louder than Matt’s with no trouble at all. “One sec, Claire!”

Matt’s eyebrows pinched together in confusion. “What?”

“I just need to figure something out.”

Matt gritted his teeth. “Why? This is just—something we all need to get through.”

Yeah, he _would_ say that. “Doesn’t mean we can’t make it easier on you instead of harder,” Foggy pointed out, and Matt opened his mouth but Foggy kept right on going. “We’re all making this harder, aren’t we?”

Matt exhaled through his nose. “I think it’s pretty clear that I’m the one making this harder than it needs to be.”

“Takes two,” Foggy said lightly. “Or, in this case, four.”

Matt just dropped his eyes to the floor, working his jaw. Definitely not about to start spilling his guts over what, exactly, was bothering him.

In fairness, knowing Matt, he might not even be able to articulate it for himself.

But Foggy was not afraid of a challenge, and he had several tools in his arsenal. For example, little known fact about cross-examination questions: they didn’t _have_ to be adversarial. In fact, they were sometimes really useful at helping someone else narrow down their own opinions.

“Got some questions for you, buddy,” Foggy announced.

Matt looked wary. “Do I have a choice?”

Foggy didn’t wanna say _no_ to that, but he didn’t want Matt to weasel out of a conversation either. So he just plopped himself back down on the bathroom floor and looked up at his friend.

Stifling a sigh, Matt lowered himself to the floor as well, using one hand for balance against the wall.

Good. Progress. Now, how to get to the root issue? Figuring out what Matt would’ve done left to his own devices seemed like a good place to start.

Foggy cleared his throat. “So, I’ve been thinking. When you first went out in the rain, you just called Claire, right?”

Matt hesitated, like a skittish animal that knew it was being led into a trap but couldn’t figure out what the trap was. He nodded.

“And now instead you’ve got me and your mom, too. I’m thinking, uh…I’m thinking she and I, specifically, are the ones making this so much harder than it needs to be, right?” Sure, Matt and Claire had their…issues. But their issues were probably ones that the two of them were kinda-sorta expecting. Maybe. Whereas Foggy and Maggie added to the mix were pushing Matt over the edge.

Maybe.

“You’re trying to help,” Matt murmured. “I know that.”

“That wasn’t my question,” Foggy said softly.

“It’s not fair to ask Claire to deal with me on her own,” Matt said.

“That wasn’t my question either.”

Matt squinted at Foggy. Or more precisely, at Foggy’s left ear. “Are you cross-examining me?”

Busted. “I’m just trying to figure out how to make this whole thing easier on you.”

One corner of Matt’s mouth rose. “That wasn’t my question.”

“You think you’re so smart,” Foggy muttered, but he couldn’t help smiling a little too. “All right, fine. Just tell me. Would you ever have asked your mom or me to come over?”

Matt didn’t answer right away. Not because he was thinking about it, though. No, because he wished he could get out of saying it. “No,” he said at last.

Foggy nodded calmly; that wasn’t exactly a surprise. “Do you want us to leave? I’m not asking what _Claire_ wants, I’m asking what _you_ want.”

Leaning his head back against the wall, Matt stared up towards the ceiling. “I don’t know.”

“Matt.”

“I’m _serious_.” Matt turned, eyes on Foggy now, and they looked wide and almost helpless. “I don’t know what I want.”

That was…that was probably actually true. He didn’t know, or else he couldn’t explain it. “Okay,” Foggy said simply. “Let’s figure this out. Maybe…maybe even though you genuinely _don’t_ want us here, you know Claire does, and what Claire wants trumps what you want, which means you actually want…what you don’t want?”

Matt’s dry outward breath was almost a laugh, and it chased away that awful, helpless look. “Objection, confusing.”

“You’re smart, man. You know what I asked.”

Matt just shrugged. Almost guiltily, now.

Backtrack, backtrack. New approach. “If Maggie and I—” Wait. Probably better not to lump himself and Maggie together, in case Matt felt differently about the two of them. “If I left, and you be honest, if I left, would you feel happy or sad?”

Matt raised his eyebrows incredulously. “ _That’s_ your genius question? Happy or sad?”

“Would you just answer it?”

Matt started fiddling with the loose fabric of his sweatpants. “If you left, I’d feel…not good.”

 _Not good_. The man had a better vocabulary than Foggy, but when it came to finding words for his own emotions, the best he could do was _not good_.

“But also…” Matt seemed to be concentrating very intently on the feel of cotton between his fingers. “Relieved.”

Ouch. Yeah, that hurt, which sucked, because this wasn’t supposed to be about Foggy at all. Foggy waited until he sounded totally normal to say: “Relieved how? Or…why?”

“Because…you wouldn’t be freaking out.”

No, that wasn’t it. Because Foggy would definitely still be freaking out, and he and Matt both knew it. Foggy thought hard, trying to put it together. “You mean, you wouldn’t have to see me freaking out? Sense, whatever,” he corrected himself, because he just _knew_ Matt was about to try to deflect with a stupid blind joke.

Instead, Matt’s brow furrowed as he thought about it. “I guess.”

That wasn’t the enthusiastic agreement Foggy was hoping for. “You also said that if I left, it wouldn’t actually be good?”

“It, uh…it means a lot that you’re here, Foggy.”

“Not what I asked,” Foggy said gently.

Matt rolled his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here. It…helps,” he said haltingly. “It’s just…you, and Claire, and M-Maggie…” He swallowed; Foggy watched his Adam’s apple bob. “I can’t relax. Because you won’t relax. And it’s just…I can feel your eyes on me, all the time, and I can’t—” He cut himself off with a harsh exhale.

“We’re smothering you,” Foggy realized aloud, and internally kicked himself for not recognizing it sooner. In his defense, he’d kind of thought that even Matt would get the whole desperate-times thing.

Matt’s eyes narrowed. Anger or frustration or something. “And I know, desperate times and all that.”

Yep.

“But it’s just…if maybe—maybe someone else could be the—the center of attention for _five minutes_ , I could…”

 _Relax_ , Foggy finished silently. “I think,” he said slowly, “I can arrange that.”

Claire

When Foggy and Matt emerged together from the bathroom, Foggy looked triumphant and Matt looked…hopeful. Both were emotions she felt like she’d last seen in another lifetime. A lifetime away from this bloodstained apartment.

And kudos to Foggy: he was subtle about this new plan of his. He convinced Maggie to leave, saying they needed to go get “comfort stuff” and he wanted her advice, somehow making it sound like he was doing her a favor by inviting her. Maggie saw through him, Claire could tell; Maggie knew this was about Matt, but she agreed gracefully to the plan and the two of them slipped out without causing a scene.

Claire, meanwhile, wasn’t sure what to do with herself when she found herself suddenly alone with Matt. He stood in the center of his living room, hands in the pockets of yet another hoodie. His head was tilted towards her, but he didn’t say anything. He just waited.

And he didn’t look optimistic. What, was he expecting a lecture? Or worse (to him, anyway), pity over everything that had happened?

Foggy, she realized, was trusting her. Trusting her to take care of his best friend in a way that only she could. And Matt, did he have any trust for her left, after all this?

Swallowing, she moved in close enough that she could take his hand, rubbing gentle circles over the back of his knuckles with her thumb. “Can you eat something?”

He shook his head. “Not hungry.”

She stifled a sigh. “Friendly reminder that you have a brand new concussion, and it’s _not_ from alien rain, which means we don’t get any accelerated healing unless this rain has other effects I don’t know about. Of course you don’t feel hungry, and you probably won’t for several hours. That doesn’t mean you should…not eat.”

And, whoops. That was a lecture.

She cleared her throat. “I mean, that’s just my…professional medical advice. It’s still up to you.”

His eyes drifted past her, towards the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” he asked, even though they both knew he could hear her stomach growling. “You didn’t eat any of the chicken you made. I could make something else.”

She was about to say no on instinct—she was _such_ a hypocrite—before she realized that making food might make him realize _he_ was hungry. Or it would at least mean that there’d be something available that he deemed edible by the time he realized he needed to eat. So she made sure he could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “Are you offering?”

“Yeah,” he said, and even in that one word, she noted how much less tension there was in his voice. He stood up a little straighter, lifted his chin a little higher, and she really should’ve known that giving him the chance to do something for her would be enough to restore something of his sense of self, but there just…hadn’t been time to _think_. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Pasta?” she suggested. “To go with the chicken?” It would get plenty of protein and carbs into him. (Into both of them.)

“I can do that.” He headed into the kitchen and, yep, his emotions were always clear in his body language, and right now his body language was calm. He was relaxed—because he was helping her.

Claire nibbled on her lower lip. They were quite a pair.

It was nice, though. This peace and quiet with him. Hoisting herself up on the counter, she watched as he moved effortlessly around the kitchen, reaching for things without looking, using that almost supernatural grace he always seemed to have. It was kind of unfair that he was this graceful while sporting a new concussion.

Still. He was definitely showing off for her as he reached for a bowl setting on the top of his fridge, causing his hoodie to ride up a bit. He’d showered away the blood, and the stitches were ready to come out thanks to supernatural rain or whatever. In other words, he looked good. Really good.

He turned his head as if glancing over his shoulder, wearing that dark smirk of his that had made her heart skip so easily when they first met. “Enjoying the view?”

She bit her lip for an entirely different reason now. “You know I am.”

The smirk broadened into a grin—less Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, more _Matt_. Under the obvious pretense of putting the bowl on the counter, he crossed the small space between them, brushing against her knees and reaching out to rest his thumb lightly on the indent she’d made on her lip.

“Be careful with these,” he murmured.

And it was such a _stupid_ thing to say, coming from this guy who busted up his (very kissable) lips on the regular, but that was Matt. He’d always treat her like something breakable even when she was the one healing him. And that imbalance was yet another thing they needed to talk about, but right now her rational mind was foggy from sleep-deprivation and the rest of her mind was very focused on the fact that they were alone right now and Matt was not actively bleeding.

Quickly, she swung her legs so they were hooked around him. He could break out of the flimsy hold in a second if he wanted to, but he showed no interest in doing so. The problem was, he didn’t do anything else either. Waiting again, always waiting for her to set their pace.

“Matt,” she whispered. “What do you want?”

His smile became something sheepish, chagrinned. What, because…he didn’t know? His hands seemed sure of themselves as they settled on her hips, but then he tilted his head and asked, “What do you want?”

“You,” she said immediately.

His raised eyebrows were incredulous.

“ _You_ ,” she insisted, and then her arms were around his neck and she was drawing him in for a kiss. It was warm, and slow, and sweet, and when one of his hands came up to cup her neck she felt as safe as she had with him on that first morning in his apartment, when he’d lent her his robe and made her breakfast and asked her to stay with him.

“Ow!” He suddenly jerked away, doubled over, grabbing his shoulder.

“Matt?” She slid off the counter. “What’s—”

“Nothing.” His hand was already up to keep her back. He rolled his shoulder experimentally; a winced flashed across his face. “Just, uh…Stick. He liked picking fights.”

“Anything serious?”

He shook his head. “No.” But his eyes were dark now, and also cold.

The whole Stick issue was a minefield just waiting for her to trip over. She caught Matt’s hand.

He pulled free—and not gently. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

This again. She kept her voice light. “I seem to recall asking what you _do_ want, not what you don’t.”

The look he gave her was a fascinating mix of emotions—relief, guilt, sheer adoration—but he took a firm step away from her.

Frustrated, she set her hands on her hips. “Would you rather we just tie you up next time you’ve got a fight coming up, since we can’t knock you out?”

And…whoa. He was frozen, eyes flitting over his face. Definitely taking her comment more seriously than she’d meant it.

“Matt?” she asked cautiously. Because…there were several different ways he could be reading this right now, and she didn’t want the fact that she was now thinking that tying him up might be the perfect (temporary) solution to influence his response. “What do you want?”

His head bowed. “I want…” He trailed off. Started again, quieter this time. “I want us to be on the same side.”

Her chest tightened. “Oh, Matt,” she breathed. “We _are_.”

He shook his head stiffly (as his lip started bleeding). “I don’t want to be the thing you’re always fighting against.”

It was a risk, but she stepped in and took his hands, and was rewarded when he didn’t jerk away. “It’s not about fighting,” she said softly. It was about trust.

But it was really no surprise that he wouldn’t see it that way.

Not yet, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is literally so much whump coming up (obviously) (I promise) but Foggy and Claire insist on this thing called "talking" and I, frankly, can't stop them.
> 
> Shoutout to the brilliant LadyMaigrey for suggesting Matt get tied up! (Also, have you read her stuff? It's really good!)


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I'm sorry for the delay in posting, but I really wanted to get this chapter right. I'm still not convinced I did, but at least it's longer, so...there's that. Enjoy your angsty whump, dear readers.

Claire

It was probably a good thing that Foggy was back (Matt had pulled away, head tilted, and said he heard Foggy and Maggie on the stairs). Neither Claire nor Matt were in a great place to delve into the Stick problem, and as for the trust issue, she figured Matt would be better off with time to think through what she’d said. So in both cases, it was good that she wasn’t really able to follow her natural impulse to push.

She did, however, have time to lean in for a kiss, firm and promising, before she heard the front door open and shut. Then Foggy came around the corner, holding two giant plastic bags. Maggie followed behind. There flash of relief in her eyes when she saw Claire and Matt standing so close together made Claire feel feelings she wasn’t sure how to interpret.

Meanwhile, Foggy dumped his spoils on the coffee table. Three board games, a pack of playing cards, a pair of cheap plastic black sunglasses, and _headphones_.

“Um,” Claire said, still holding Matt’s hands.

Matt’s head was cocked. “What’s all that?”

Foggy’s voice was triumphant. “This, my friend, is our survival kit. We’ve got chess, Monopoly, and Settlers of Catan. Monopoly and Settlers aren’t super accessible, but we can fix that. Cut different slits in the cards so you can feel what they are or something. Same with the playing cards.”

Oh, Foggy was smart. That education of his paying off. The games would help Matt pretend that this was just a group of friends hanging out, rather than an intense medical intervention.

Sure enough, Matt ducked his head, a hesitant smile fluttering over his lips. “Oh, um…”

Foggy pulled something else out of one of the bags. “I also got headphones, in case you wanna just…listen to music and forget all of us are here or something.”

But Matt was already shaking his head. “Headphones will make it worse.”

“You could try,” Claire suggested gently, running her thumb over the back of his hand. Headphones might make it easier for him to meditate or even nap.

“No. Sorry.”

She backed off. “No problem.”

He looked relieved that she hadn’t put up more of an argument and she felt a pang of regret for all (no, some) of the times she had.

Foggy swept on, drawing Matt’s attention back. “And last but not least…” He presented the sunglasses with a flourish. “Cheap plastic. So you can, y’know, cover your eyes without as much risk of breaking them and stabbing yourself if you faceplant again.”

Matt reached for the glasses, hands skimming over them. “Thanks,” he said wryly. Claire ignored her disappointment when he slipped the lenses on.

“So?” Foggy poked at the pile of games. “What should we play first?”

Matt turned slightly towards Claire. “Your pick,” he offered.

She made a show of pretending to think about it. “Monopoly,” she decided. All of them could play at once, and everyone knew the rules.

Foggy lit up. “ _Perfect_.”

“You know,” Matt started to say, “Monopoly is really less than ideal. The game is built almost entirely on chance with hardly any opportunities to counteract the power of luck with actual skill. And, of course, there are few mechanisms in place to restore someone’s position once they fall behind, which kills almost any incentive to keep playing once you—”

“Murdock, _shut up_.” Foggy nudged him (too hard, considering; Matt winced and his head tilted stiffly towards Claire like he was afraid she’d noticed). “Literally nobody cares. And you _just said_ Claire could pick.”

Matt flashed Claire a look like he was trying to be annoyed with her. “Well, she picked wrong.”

“But! Have you considered the fact,” Foggy said loudly, already opening up the box, “that this is _Avengers_ Monopoly?”

And so that was how, ten minutes later, they all ended up clustered on Matt’s floor, arranged around the coffee table with a mess of cards and tiny plastic game pieces surrounding them. Five minutes after they started actually playing, Matt had taken his glasses off while he and Foggy got locked into a debate about whether Matt should buy the Spiderman property.

“You gotta at _least_ save your money for the orange properties,” Foggy was arguing, but his voice was starting to sound a bit slurred.

Was he…drunk or something?

Matt was unmoved. “I can get three hotels here for the cost of only one of those orange hotels.”

Foggy waved his hand like Matt was about to make the biggest mistake of his life. “You gotta save your money for better properties, Matt!”

Claire frowned at Foggy. “Why do you even care? It’s his money.”

Sighing theatrically, Foggy gestured vaguely at the board. “Because when we start trading properties later, I want him to actually have something _of value_.”

“This is of value,” Matt retorted, obviously miffed. He cocked his head at Claire. “Foggy thinks nothing lower than the orange color is worth spending money on, _even though_ I won the game once by getting a row of hotels on either side the jail.”

“That was a _two-person game_ , Matt,” Foggy protested, loud and impatient. “ _Totally_ different context.”

Claire exchanged a glance with Maggie. Five minutes in, and she was already starting to think she should’ve picked a different game. And yeah, past Foggy must’ve been drunk, because current Foggy was definitely acting drunk. Not that Claire thought he wasn’t usually loud and argumentative, at least where Matt was concerned. It was really mostly the slur that was cluing her in.

Matt opened his mouth to continue the argument, only to jerk and cut himself off with a quiet hiss.

“Matt?” she asked, very carefully not panicking. She needed to check in, but she didn’t want to limit the (mostly) fun atmosphere.

“What, yeah, I’m fine.” He said it all fast, way too fast. So it was really no surprise that a second later he glared at the room at large. “I’m serious, it was just one hit.”

It didn’t sound like he was lying, but that didn’t explain how wide his eyes were: wide, and full of dread. Something was wrong, something was definitely wrong, but after the bombs blew up half of Hell’s Kitchen, he’d stopped calling her for help. Which meant she’d have no idea where they were on his timeline until….

Until Nobu.

She looked at Matt in a new light. If all he was dreading was more pain, he wouldn’t be looking like this. He’d be gritting his teeth and closing himself off, or maybe he’d start flirting with her in an attempt to distract her.

No, the dread definitely wasn’t of pain.

Maybe she was reading too much into this, but maybe it was dread of _shame_. Dread of the shame he was about to have no choice but to confront—and with an audience.

She knew, was the thing. She knew what he’d tried to do.

_They’d been talking again for about a month. Talking—what a stupid way to put it. Made her feel like she was in junior high. But what else was she supposed to call it? What other words were there to describe how significant it was that he was showing up on her fire escape again, giving her his puppy dog eyes paired with a roughish grin and asking if she had some spare sutures he could borrow?_

_Anyway, they’d been talking. And she’d been wondering, for a while, when he was going to make a move. It was eerily similar to how she’d felt when they’d first fallen into each other’s lives. She’d realized back then how unique she was to him—the only person who knew both sides of him. She’d seen how desperately he needed that. And so, in her mind, it had only been a question of time before he kissed her._

_In hindsight, it was strange that she would feel like that again. After all, she’d discovered quickly that Foggy and Karen were now in on the secret, even though he hadn’t been brave enough to tell her about Maggie at that point. But there’d still been that strange certainty that he’d end up choosing her. It wasn’t narcissism. It was just…knowing him._

_(It was maybe also projecting.)_

_Anyway, about a month after he’d come back into her life, he’d lingered one night after she finished popping his arm back into its socket, putting him back together from two separate knife wounds, and cleaning dirt off his nose just as an excuse to keep touching him._

_But he hadn’t leaned into her touch like always. He’d pulled back, fidgeting a little with the mask in his hand (still hadn’t gotten body armor again, and she was trying not to nag him about it—yet). He’d cleared his throat. “Claire?”_

_Something about his voice, his face—it all screamed_ vulnerable _. “Yes?” she’d responded carefully._

_“Do you…do you remember when…when we knew this wouldn’t work?”_

_Yes, she remembered sitting in his apartment, stomach full of food he’d made for her, wearing clothes he’d bought for her. Safe and cared for and a little scared of how quickly she was falling for this volatile man. “I thought you were…too close to becoming the kind of man you hate.”_

(Remembering that conversation now—well, maybe his reaction to discovering he’d bruised her made more sense than she’d thought.)

_“Yeah.” He’d wet his lips, keeping his eyes aimed down, away from her. “I just…I wanted to tell you…you were right.”_

_Her heart had dropped into her stomach. “You really…”_

_“No.” His voice got very quiet. “But I tried to.”_

_And then the story had come out. The murder of their client, his colleague’s grief, his own feeling of failure, and Karen talking about divine vengeance. An empty warehouse that wasn’t empty. An ambush. Blood. Fire. And a swipe at Fisk that might’ve killed him if not for his armor._

_She’d seen the results of all that, obviously. She’d put him back together again. But she’d had no idea how much all that blood had cost his soul._

_And then he’d admitted that he’d tried again, after Midland Circle, when he’d well and truly cut himself off from all his anchors. His work, his friends, his faith. She could’ve predicted that, really. But it hadn’t been any easier to hear for its predictability._

_He’d come back to himself, eventually. And he’d come back to his anchors—his work, his friends, his faith. She wouldn’t have even considered going out with him otherwise. But she knew him, knew the way guilt gnawed at his soul. The fact that he hadn’t actually crossed that line would mean little to him in light of how close to it he’d come._

And now the look in his face was eerily similar to the look he’d worn when he finally told her what happened. Similar enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of Claire’s neck.

She set her hand on his knee. “Matt? Do you know what’s coming next?”

The tone of _her_ voice was enough to make Maggie and Foggy freeze (Foggy a bit belatedly), all lightheartedness draining from the scene.

“Uh…” He cleared his throat. “Yeah, it’s…I only got hit a few times looking for the warehouse, but, uh…”

“What warehouse.” That was Foggy, too tense to add questioning inflection.

Matt pulled back, away from the board game and out from under Claire’s hand. Standing up, he brushed himself off. Probably trying to disguise the way his hands had started shaking. “The, uh, the warehouse where…where Nobu was waiting.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Foggy whispered.

Maggie’s eyebrows drew closer together.

Shaking his head, Matt held out a hand for no apparent reason. “Guys, please, it’s…” He trailed off, because it wasn’t _fine_ or _not that bad_ or whatever he’d been going to say. It wasn’t any of those things, and he knew it. He took a deep breath that sounded shaky. “Okay, listen, it’s going to be bad, but n-not—not as bad as it looks. I promise.”

With great self-control, Claire didn’t scoff audibly. She did, however, turn towards Maggie who may have seen the scars but probably was not prepared to see the fresh _wounds_. “It’ll be really bad.” She turned back to Matt. “Can you at least take your sweatshirt off?”

The puppy eyes he turned on her now were both sad and startled.

“Matt, please. I need to see what’s happening. It’s gonna have to come off at some point anyway. You know that, right?”

He nodded once, wordlessly, and pulled the sweatshirt over his head. Claire’s heart started beating faster at the sight of his scars. Not like she hadn’t seen them a hundred times by now, but she was remembering how he’d looked when Foggy called her to his apartment that night, and she was thinking about what it must’ve been like for him before she got there, about the fact that he’d had to actually _live through_ all that and was about to be living through it again, and—

Matt pushed himself to his feet and seemed to try very hard to smile. “I’ll just be, um…” He backed gracefully around behind the couch and ended up in the open space in front of the closet under the stairs. “Feel free to talk amongst yourselves, if you— _ngh_.”

And there was the first hit. No blood, but it popped his head back.

“Shit,” Foggy repeated, staggering upright. Claire grabbed his arm with one hand and pressed the other over her mouth.

Matt started bouncing on his toes again, absorbing hits. They looked like they were harder than the ones he usually took, or maybe just thrown with more accuracy to make them hurt worse. But. He was keeping it together. Foggy looked terrified. Maggie still looked a little confused, like she still wasn’t sure why Foggy and Claire were freaking out so much over this _particular_ fight. Claire chewed on her fingernails.

He suddenly gave his head a sharp shake and spat blood from his mouth, but that was fine, that was nothing serious. Claire held back.

Then he grabbed his neck and neck injuries were _bad_ , she hadn’t even realized he _had_ one, but when she scooted closer he put out a hand to keep her away. He didn’t seem to be bleeding or otherwise hurt, although color bloomed under his skin.

A second later, his body shuddered—from what, she couldn’t tell—and twin slices appeared across his forearms, dripping blood onto the floor, followed almost immediately by a deeper gash across his chest. He let out a yell, doubling over, only to straighten up again with his head thrown back, twisting around like he could get to the new injury slashed across his right shoulder. His whole body flinched to the side, which had the effect of scattering red droplets everywhere.

He shouted again, then locked his teeth together over the sound. Something had sliced across his gut. Claire’s own stomach clenched. This wasn’t the deepest cut, not by far, but his past enemy’s weapons were getting closer and closer to vital organs, and she _knew_ what happened here, she _knew_ he survived this, but…scarlet rivulets ran down his pale body. Her mind flashed back to pictures she’d seen as a kid of the Biblical plagues striking Egypt, the rivers turned to blood against sand.

He suddenly dropped into a crouch, grabbing at his calf and blinking up at the ceiling as glistening darkness seeped through his sweatpants. Claire took a half-step towards him only to freeze. If she waded in there now, she’d only make things worse. She just had to keep telling herself that. He was breathing shallowly, face twisted, all his attention clearly on himself, on just getting through this. She didn’t want to know what would happen if she got too close too soon.

At that moment, someone banged on the door. They all jumped except for Matt. Claire flapped her hands at Maggie, who pushed Foggy back onto the couch when he tried to lurch to his feet so she could scuttle off down the hall and deal with the concerned neighbors who were probably two seconds away from calling the police or something.

More blood seeped through the other leg of Matt’s sweatpants. He squeezed his eyes shut and then…and then he started trying to stand _up_ , for reasons Claire couldn’t fathom.

But he abandoned his efforts a second later, crying out and arching his back so violently that blood flew through the air, landing on the table, the walls, the couch.

And then. While he was trying to get his breath back, his whole body jerked and he _screamed_. He crumpled to the ground, arm wrapped around his stomach. Claire’s eyes were locked on the new hole deep in his side.

But even now that the wound was in place, Matt was _still screaming._

Maggie raced back into the room. “What’s happening?”

Claire just shook her head. She’d only been there for the aftermath; she had no idea what he was actually going through right now.

Matt finally cut off the scream with a wet gasp, and Claire squinted to see that the hole was actually _bigger_ now, the skin and muscle even more torn than before. She blinked, dizziness setting in as she realized what must’ve happened.

He was on hands and knees now, head bowed as if in prayer and hanging down between his arms, entire body trembling. The rug beneath him was stained cherry-red.

Surely this was the end. She closed her eyes for one selfish second just to gather herself.

Until his agonized exhale snapped her eyes open again. He’d crumpled onto his back and thrown his hands up in a futile attempt to protect his head, which was currently being pummeled again and again by invisible fists until his face was as bloodied as the rest of him and his eyes were at half-mast.

In the corner, Foggy was pale—even worse than he’d been that night. Maggie’s eyes were glued to her son as her lips moved soundlessly, hands clenched into tight fists at her side.

Okay. Claire held perfectly still, not wanting to jump in prematurely and accidentally get clocked in the face.

But then Matt’s eyes _closed_.

She had no idea if he was passing out because he’d passed out before or if he was passing out because of the cumulative trauma his body had endured over the last eight hours. He’d lived through _that_ , sure, but that didn’t mean he’d live through _this_.

So she steeled herself, grabbed her bag, and darted in.

He remained motionless as she pressed a sterile cloth to the hook-wound on his side, pressing harder and harder to get the bleeding to stop. Maggie fell into place wordlessly beside her, tackling his other cuts. Something about the hard lines on Maggie’s face worried Claire, and it was a relief that neither of them tried to say anything.

Foggy ended up on his knees on Matt’s other side, whispering nonstop but too quietly for Claire to hear. He might as well make himself useful, so Claire thrust more bandages at him and told him to hold them to one of the long slices across Matt’s arms.

The rest of it, the…emotional…everything…they could deal with all that later.

Matt

Matt awoke to twin sensations of needles stabbing into his skin and he flinched, only to find himself pinned down by a slender weight across his chest. It took him a terrifying amount of time to realize that it was only Claire’s forearm.

Claire.

Oh.

He couldn’t stop the soundless gasp building in his chest, his throat, his body shocked by the pain it was in. The cool tearstains on his cheeks were a soft counterpoint to the fire on his chest, across his back, in his gut. It hurt so bad and everything was at that point where he couldn’t…he just couldn’t anymore. His brain couldn’t compartmentalize anymore, and all the pain was smearing together, drowning everything else.

He wanted to pass out again. He should ask Claire for the oxycodone or the morphine. Whichever, he didn’t care, he just wanted to pass out. Wake up when this was over. Let her deal with his mistake.

No. He couldn’t do that to her. To Foggy.

He’d thought at the time that being gutted alive was his penance for wanting to murder Fisk, and for _actually_ killing Nobu, unintentional (and ultimately ineffective) as it had been.

But this? Sitting here after hours of injury upon injury, being gutted alive _again_ with Claire swearing under her breath as she tried to fix him and Foggy staring with horror and Maggie determinedly trying to _fix him_ when she had _no idea_ what he’d tried to do?

This was so much worse.

He bit his tongue so hard it bled. Didn’t matter. The world on fire was already muted by heavy, sticky blood.

He had to get through this.

He closed his eyes. Knew he wouldn’t be able to meditate through this. Had to try anyway.

_Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same mind, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin._

He swallowed his own blood.

_Whoever suffers in the body is done with sin._

That was definitely not true. Not for him.

Then again, he wasn’t exactly participating in Christ’s sufferings right now, was he?

_If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name._

Well. He was technically suffering as a murderer, and definitely suffering as a criminal. So.

He remembered his argument with Foggy about the pain that Matt deserved and the pain that he allegedly didn’t. The worst thing was, this pain hadn’t even been enough last time. He’d tried to kill Fisk and he’d gotten ripped to shreds by Nobu—that should’ve been all the punishment he needed. But no, because after Midland Circle Matt had tried the _same exact thing_ again.

God knew by then that no matter how much pain He inflicted on Matt, it wouldn’t change anything. So He’d finally allowed someone else to die for Matt’s sins.

Father Lantom.

Which was why this, _this_ , was pain he deserved.


	16. Chapter 16

Matt

These wounds were supposed to heal faster, right? So why did it feel like they _weren’t?_

Claire had stitched him up so that he was at least no longer in danger of bleeding to death. He even let her convince him to give him an IV drip, just for a little bit. Really, though, blood loss wasn’t a thing he’d need to worry about again for…for a while yet. The armor had done its job while he’d had it.

He was stretched out on the couch, careful not to move too much, itching from the sensation of the stitches holding his skin together, and all too aware of the drip pushing foreign liquid into his veins. He was trying not to freak himself out by imagining that he could actually trace the path of someone else’s blood through his body.

Foggy was back to normal at least insofar as he was no longer inebriated. But he was also sitting silently on the bottom step of the staircase to the roof, and Matt was trying to tell himself that it _wasn’t_ because Foggy was reliving all the hurt and anger and betrayal he’d felt from this time in history (and rethinking whether Matt was worth it) but he didn’t know for sure.

Maggie was perched primly on the chair opposite Matt, hands clasped in her lap. She’d tried three times to get Claire to explain what had happened, and Claire had refused. Now Matt got the sense that as soon as he gave enough signs of life, Maggie would pounce.

And Claire?

Claire was curled up on the other end of the couch, fast asleep. She’d originally sat there, tucked up over his feet, to keep an eye on him, but she’d been asleep for at least ten minutes by now, by Matt’s count.

He was glad, and he was guilty.

At that moment, he felt a sudden stab of searing pain that made him jerk and gasp. Holding his breath, he listened to Claire, relieved when the steady rise and fall of her chest assured him that he hadn’t woken her. But when he pressed his hand to his side, the place where he could still feel the phantom tug of Nobu’s hook, he found warm blood seeping through his bandage and his sweatshirt.

And Maggie pounced.

“Shh,” he whispered desperately as she shot to her feet and grabbed Claire’s first aid supplies. “Let her—let her sleep.”

In response, Maggie knelt in front of the couch. “Then you’d better stay quiet.”

“It’s fine, it’s not—not that bad.”

Taking matters into her own hands, she unzipped his sweatshirt. “What happened?”

Clenching his jaw, he closed his eyes as her small fingers peeled back the bandage. “Just tore the stitches. I was…trying to see how much I could move.”

He _hadn’t_ been trying to get Claire to come back. He had, in fact, put off calling her, choosing instead to poke and prod at the wound and see if he could maybe stitch it up himself. He hadn’t quite been stupid enough to try, but it had been a near thing.

But then she’d promised that she was on her way, voice blessedly soft in his ear even through the harsh mechanical distortions of the phone, and she’d shown up with exasperation and fondness in equal measure, and even though he’d been convinced, then, when she left, that there was no hope left for anything romantic between them, he’d realized that he’d at least have her friendship.

Which was still infinitely more than what he deserved.

“Of course you were,” Maggie muttered. Again, it sounded like something she hadn’t meant for him to hear, but before he could decide whether he wanted to respond, she was sliding a sterilized needle under his skin.

His whole body clenched and he thrust his head back, gritting his teeth, barely locking a noise away before it could escape. He didn’t even know what kind of noise it would be. (Just not a whimper, _anything_ but a whimper.)

Maggie froze. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”

His eyes were stinging again. Not from the pain (not _just_ from the pain) but from sheer frustration. “It’s fine,” he bit out. “Just do it.” It would hurt, hurt worse than it should now that he was so tired, his control over his senses slipping fast, but what did he expect? Besides, this was just more of what he deserved.

Maggie’s silence was disapproving, but she got to work. She wasn’t as fast as Claire, though, and he let out several grunts that sounded wetter than he’d like. Each time, her fingers paused for a split second and she whispered an apology. All this time, and she _still_ wasn’t used to this. She’d do it, sure, but her breathing and her hands and her heartbeat were never as matter-of-fact as her voice.

She hated hurting him.

Well, he hated having her here watching him be hurt. Claire might get exasperated, Foggy might get angry, but Maggie’s reaction to his dumb decisions were different. She was sarcastic, yes, but beneath that, he always thought she was _disappointed_. Disappointed that her son had turned out to be such a wreck.

(Probably disappointed at Jack, too, for letting it happen, and didn’t that just make Matt feel great.)

As soon as she tied off the stitches, he put a hand on her arm, letting her feel the tension in his fingers. “That’s enough.”

Swallowing, she busied herself restoring the first aid kit to order. “I know.”

He wanted to leave it at that. Couldn’t. “Thank you,” he added begrudgingly.

“For stitching you up again, or for being here?” Her breathing caught as soon as the words were out; she wanted to take them back.

The merciful thing to do would be to just keep his mouth shut, but…it was selfish, but at least talking was a distraction from the pain that was being so much more resilient than normal. “It’s not as…it’s not as bad after this. I get the suit.” (That was a lie, things were still plenty bad even with the suit, but it wasn’t like she could argue.) He forced the words out: “After this wound heals, Claire can handle it.”

Maggie held her breath. She nodded shortly and took up a tense position on the very edge of one of his armchairs. She’d gotten the answer she hadn’t wanted.

Closing his eyes, Matt pretended he was already gone. It would be easier, it really would. He could just focus on the pain, and if Claire or Foggy decided to remind him that he was more than muscle and nerves wrapped in torn skin, it would be through a gentle kiss or a reference to some inside joke from law school. At worst, there’d be a hint of hurt over his history of betrayals. But he could handle that.

Maggie, though, was a constant reminder of how completely he’d failed his dad. He’d gotten his law degree, sure, but then he’d almost thrown it away. And he’d willfully fed the devil inside, doing the _one thing_ Jack never wanted from him.

On top of that, Maggie had this nasty way of prodding at his soul, reminding him of its potency just when he’d most rather forget its existence.

Easier. It’d definitely be easier once she was gone.

He wasn’t sure how long it was before Claire woke up. It was his fault, unsurprisingly. He’d been lying there obediently, trying to rest, when the damn wound on his side ripped _again_. He hunched over laterally, curling around the wound, and she jerked awake at the movement of his feet.

“Matt?” Her voice sounded automatic, like she was tapping into some nurse’s mode that didn’t actually require thought. “What is it this time?”

He focused on keeping his concentration where it belonged: on his breathing, not on the pain. It was becoming more and more of an impossible challenge. He held himself rigidly on the couch.

The couch shifted as Claire got on her knees, hovering over his legs so she could investigate. “Oh.” She lifted a hand, fingers fluttering, and Maggie responded by moving the first aid kit within reach before retreating back across the room.

With his senses zeroing in so determinedly on his injury, Maggie and Foggy were both at the very edge of Matt’s perception now, and he couldn’t quite…couldn’t quite get a read on them. He couldn’t decide whether it was a relief not to be able to guess at what they were thinking.

Claire’s hands started clearing away the torn stitches, and Matt failed to bite back a curse. She whispered an apology and her hands became gentle, gentler than they’d ever been before, light as feathers or snowfall, and hesitant. He felt another stab of guilt. She may not think he was physically made of glass, but it was painfully obvious that she thought he was made of glass in some other way. Emotionally, spiritually, whatever.

Her voice was its normal tone, though. Brisk and businesslike. (She and Maggie were weirdly alike in that regard, and he tried not to think about it too much.) “How’d you open it up again this time?” she asked. “Stretching too far?”

“Parkour,” Matt said tightly.

She paused in the middle of the stitches. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. Tracking one of Madam Gao’s men.” It had been fun, actually. Flying through the city like that in broad daylight. Risky, stupid, not something he should ever do again. But fun.

Claire snorted. “Next time, let’s just do a normal date night.”

His lips twitched in a startled grin. “This…this is a date night?”

The sound Claire made was half a sigh, half a laugh. “I mean, I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah?” he asked, grateful for the distraction and also morbidly curious. “What was the worst?”

“Mmm, there was this guy who basically interviewed me, once.” Her breath ghosted across his skin as she bent her head closer to his injury. “It was the most unromantic thing you can imagine. Like the whole first date was just a giant test.”

“Did you… _ah_ …did you pass?”

She snorted again. “Once I figured out what he was doing, I flunked on purpose. I even told him I liked cats just because I could tell he didn’t.”

Finally, _finally_ , the stitching stopped and he let himself sink back into the cushions while she bandaged the whole thing up. “Ruthless, Miss Temple.”

“Not really,” she said. “I just…don’t waste time on people who aren’t worth it.”

He opened his mouth to fire back something witty, only for his mouth to dry as the implication of her words sunk in.

She misinterpreted. “No, don’t argue,” she said, setting one finger over his lips. “Just accept it.”

Well. Maybe it wasn’t entirely misinterpretation. Didn’t she realize _this_ was what he’d meant when he’d told her how close he’d come to crossing that line? So why would _now_ be the time for her to insist on his worth?

It didn’t make sense. He was probably missing something. After all, he still technically had a concussion. Yeah.

She traded her finger for her lips against his, only to pull back with a sad sigh when he didn’t manage to really respond. “You should sleep,” she murmured. “Before…whatever happens next.”

No, she should sleep. And Foggy. They’d gotten fewer hours than Matt had at this point, since they hadn’t had the advantage of passing out as much. She could take the bed, and Foggy could have the couch just as soon as…just as soon as Matt’s body stopped rebelling and actually moved the way he wanted it to.

“Shh.” Claire laid a hand on his thigh, stilling its aimless movement. “Stay still. Rest. Promise me.” She slid back down the couch, curling up on the empty seat with her head rested on the back. Watching him, apparently.

Maybe he wouldn’t move, then. Just for now. Just for her.

Instead, he let his mind settle on the sounds of her breathing evening out again. At some point, Foggy got up, joints cracking, and shuffled back into the living room to flop down in the other armchair, stretching his legs out in front of him. Not asleep, not yet, but not gearing up to revisit the fight they’d had after this all happened the first time, for which Matt was thankful.

After what felt like half an hour but was probably more like ten minutes (time always felt longer when pain was harder to block out), Maggie got up suddenly like she’d magically sensed that the hook-wound was healed. It wasn’t, not yet, but he could also taste the salt from the tears she was unable to keep back any longer, so he didn’t really blame her for wanting to get away.

But that wasn’t enough to stop him from blurting out: “Maggie?”

She froze (and Foggy tensed). “Yes?”

He just…he couldn’t handle her leaving without knowing what she thought. She was the closest thing he had now to Father Lantom. But he didn’t know why he was asking, he knew the answer, he didn’t actually want to hear the condemnation in someone else’s voice too, someone claiming to speak for God. Maybe it was his Catholic masochism, as Foggy insisted on calling it, that moved his tongue to say: “I deserved this, right?”

Foggy’s breathing hitched, but he kept silent.

And Maggie, her heartrate was speeding up with anxiety, but her voice was as steady as ever as she held perfectly still on the other side of the coffee table: “What makes you say that?”

“Did they…” He gestured weakly first at Claire, then at Foggy. “Did they tell you how this happened?”

“Should they have?”

Foggy was listening. Foggy was listening to every word. Matt must really be a masochist, because he found himself haltingly telling the story anyway. Elena. The druggie. The warehouse. Nobu. Fisk. His own intent to kill.

If she’d been clinging to the belief that all of this was the result of self-defense, she was now disabused of that innocent notion.

She folded her arms tightly across her chest. She was upset. She was trying to hide her disappointment (in _him_ ), and her voice came out sharp. “You think God made you get sliced to an inch from death to punish you for wanting to kill someone?”

“Trying,” he corrected weakly. “Trying to kill someone. And…and if that wasn’t enough then, it’s gotta…it’s gotta be enough now, right?” Now, with the new torture over the last several hours, was it too much to hope for that his penance was finally over?

“You think…you think God summoned _alien rain_ that affected almost the entire east coast…just to punish you?”

All right, it sounded stupid when she put it like that.

She lowered her arms to her side. Her footsteps crossed the room until she knelt in front of the couch again. “Matthew,” she began, voice low and private and just for him. “When God looks down on you, what do you think He sees?”

He shouldn’t have stopped her from leaving. (Why _had_ he?) “It doesn’t matter.”

She just sat there with her hands in her lap, so close that he couldn’t distract himself from her scent, from the sound of her heartbeat. Forcing him to pay attention to her. Forcing him to think about it.

He sighed. “I dunno. I think…I just…” He curled tighter into himself. “It’s supposed to hurt.”

She paused. “Why?”

“Because…” It came out mostly muffled by the couch. “Because I keep failing. Everyone.”

“We all fail each other. That doesn’t mean—”

“Whoever suffers in the body is done with sin,” he reminded her. “I’m not done with sin, so I have to keep…” He trailed off.

Her deep exhale was slow, steady. Measured. “You,” she said, voice as precise as a scalpel and somehow still gentle, “have yet again drawn the wrong conclusion.”

“Seems pretty straightforward,” he muttered.

“The verses don’t promise that you can burn sin out of yourself through suffering, or else I’d say you’d be the holiest of all of us.”

He stifled a grimace, chagrinned that whatever holiness he had was such a joke to her.

One of her hands moved to settle on the arm of the couch, an inch away from his head, like she was testing to see whether he’d pull away. When he didn’t, she went on: “Those verses are from a letter written to members of the Church facing persecution from the Roman empire and rejection from their Jewish friends and families. But none of that was enough to erase sin from the readers, or else the Apostle Peter wouldn’t have gone on to call his readers to holy lives. It would’ve been a given.”

He frowned. “Suffering helps, though.”

“It does,” she agreed calmly, surprising him, only to add: “Depending on how you view it.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“The verses call us to arm ourselves with the same mindset that Christ had on the cross, remember? And we know that Christ didn’t embrace suffering _for the sake of suffering_. Why did he choose to endure the cross, Matthew? I know you listened in catechism.”

The verse flashed into his mind in that uncanny way that the Scriptures sometimes had. His lips moved almost without his permission. “For the joy set before him,” he whispered, “he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

“That’s it,” she murmured. “To be like Christ, we believe that suffering for others’ sins points us towards something greater than the suffering itself. The pain reminds us that true happiness is found not in our own constructed comforts but in a higher purpose, a higher glory, a higher joy.”

Funny, he couldn’t think of anything that made him feel more tied down to earth than physical pain.

Her low sigh told him she knew what he was thinking. “Are you really telling me that, when you endure pain, you’re only thinking of yourself?”

Well…no. Unbidden memories and echoes rose in his mind. He thought of that little boy the Russians stole, a little boy worth every knife-wound and damaged rib. He thought of Elena and Ben and Ray Nadeem. He remembered a collapsing building battering his body, but how it hadn’t mattered because he’d been holding Elektra. He thought of Claire, and Foggy, and Karen, and all the pain he’d ever endured for them, and all the pain he’d endure again if it meant keeping them safe.

Wetting his lips, he shook his head.

Her hand moved into his hair, soft. Not a nun’s touch or a healer’s touch; a mother’s touch. “And when the Bible speaks of the joy set before Christ…what joy do you think that was?”

Matt didn’t dare to hope.

“It was us, Matthew.” Her heart was beating slow, and steady, and sure. “It was you.”

Well, he couldn’t deny that she believed it. But he couldn’t really imagine anyone feeling that way about him, let alone God. In fact, he was much more used to being considered a burden than a joy.

But she clearly wanted him to believe it, so he nodded as if he did.


	17. Chapter 17

Foggy

Foggy’s butt was sore. Stairs were not meant to be sat on. At least, not for this long. But he didn’t really want to move from his safe spot, where he could observe the rest of the room from a distance.

He couldn’t decide which was worse: looking at Matt, or looking literally anywhere else. He kept glancing back and forth between Matt (and Maggie, their heads bent close together) and the window where morning light was streaming through, diluting the kaleidoscope of colors from teat atrocious billboard. Looking at the window meant losing himself in memories of the first time that all this happened, when his worldview came crashing down with the realization that his wounded duck of a best friend, by-the-book summa cum laude graduate Matt Murdock, was so fed up with the system that he went out at night to beat people up—and he _enjoyed_ it. It brought back all the shock, the betrayal, the anger, and the fear.

But looking at Matt meant seeing his gray skin and the tearstains lingering on his cheeks. Meant realizing that Matt probably felt worse about all this than Foggy. Emotionally, at least, even though Maggie seemed to be helping him…a little.

And physically, he obviously _definitely_ felt worse than Foggy. Honestly, Foggy couldn’t imagine getting all the same wounds from Nobu when he’d barely recovered from the last round of injuries. The magic healing part of the rain was keeping him alive, apparently, but…barely.

Foggy rubbed at his own head. At least he wasn’t drunk anymore.

But he didn’t have time to appreciate this small blessing because Matt suddenly…kind of… _lurched_. With a strangled, gasping sound. Maggie jerked backwards, hands up like she thought someone would accuse her of causing this new harm, or maybe she was just scared of touching Matt and making it worse.

“What is it?” Claire asked tensely, swooping in (which justified Foggy’s decision to stay on the steps, although he was ready to jump up if he needed to). “What’s happening?”

“Ah—” Matt’s eyes flickered blindly around at the ceiling. “Yeah—that was—I’m fine.”

“Gonna need a bit more than that,” Claire said, still tense but not aiming any sharpness at Matt.

Matt pushed himself until he was halfway sitting up, leaning heavily on one elbow, catching his breath. “No, really,” he insisted. “I don’t know _what_ it was. It was Madam Gao. This…woman,” he explained helplessly, apparently realizing that no one else in the room had any idea who or what he was talking about. “She had, um…abilities. Powers.”

“What,” Claire said dumbly.

“…I don’t know,” Matt said in a small voice, curling up on himself a little like he knew he’d given the wrong answer.

Claire exchanged a worried look with Maggie. “So you have no idea what this woman did to you?”

“Nothing,” Matt said quickly. “Just stunned me,” he corrected himself a second later. “She left while I was down, she didn’t try anything else, and it didn’t, um…” He took a deep breath, and Foggy swallowed hard when he caught the shakiness on the inhale.

Claire softened even more, running a hand through his hair now that it seemed safe. “Tell me what else happened.”

“Nothing. I swear.”

Claire kept her hand in his hair. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“I know, I know…” He closed his eyes. Wet his lips. “It was just a bad day, all right? And it’s…it’s kind of all coming back.”

Oh. Oh, Foggy could relate. Bracing himself, he stood up and ventured into the living room, stopping at the closest end of the couch. If the way Matt tensed up was any indication, he’d sensed his approach. So, y’know, they were clearly off to a good start.

“Wanna talk about it?” Foggy asked.

Matt shook his head. Big surprise.

“ _Should_ you talk about it?” Foggy asked.

It was both a surprise and a relief when the corner of Matt’s mouth turned up the tiniest bit, but it dropped down a second later. “It’s fine. It’s over. She’s gone.” He paused, and then his fingers curled into fists as he lowered himself down onto the back, gaze hardening as he stared unseeingly at the ceiling. “Well, she’s probably finding new people to take advantage of, she’s not gonna stop, but…I can’t…”

 _Take advantage of?_ “What’s she doing, buddy?”

Matt just shook his head again.

Well, if he was worried that she was still doing it, whatever it was, maybe they could help with that. “I’ll call Brett,” Foggy offered. “If you just give me a name and—”

“Cops can’t help,” Matt said flatly.

Okay. So. The thing was, sometimes Matt thought cops couldn’t help because, like, the cops were super corrupt or something. Or because the crisis involved literal dragon bones and bizarro crap like that. In those cases, he was probably right, even if Foggy wasn’t happy about it. But. Sometimes Matt was all “cops can’t help” about stuff like the Frank Castle situation, where what he really meant was “People are gonna die, and better me than the cops.” And it was Foggy’s job as his best friend to not let him get away with that kind of thinking.

So Foggy thought it was worth the risk to push a little, just to see what kind of situation Matt was talking about here. “Why can’t the cops help?”

Maggie shot him a warning look; Foggy glared right back. She might be Matt’s mother, but she’d been AWOL for _decades_. As far as Foggy was concerned, she wasn’t an authority on what was good for Matt.

Matt seemed to be searching for words, even though the tension in his jaw made it clear that he’d really rather not be saying anything at all. But Foggy just waited, and no one else said anything to give him an out.

Finally, Matt let out a small, defeated sigh. “She’s Hand.”

Oh.

“ _Shit_ ,” Claire whispered.

Maggie frowned. “What—”

“Ninjas,” Foggy said tightly. “They’re the reason Matt got stuck under that building.”

Matt gritted his teeth. “She’s one of their leaders. She was in Hell’s Kitchen before, running a heroin ring. She had these…these followers…”

Foggy suddenly snapped his fingers, remembering bits and scraps from Fisk’s first trial. “The blind ones!”

That came out wrong. But before Foggy could try to take the words back, Matt sat up, head turning towards Foggy, doing that thing he did where he stared straight at someone even though he couldn’t see them. “Yeah,” he said, very quietly. “The blind ones.”

Guilt wriggled uncomfortably in Foggy’s stomach. But, like he usually did when he wasn’t sure what to say, he decided to talk anyway, figuring that the sooner he knew what Matt was really upset about here, the better. “So she…she took advantage of them because they were blind?”

“No.” Matt’s lips barely moved as he spoke. “She made them blind themselves.”

Oh. Okay. Yeah, Foggy could see why that would be traumatizing. “Sorry, man, that’s—”

Matt shoved himself up off the couch; his face drained of color but he didn’t fall or even seem to lose his balance. “She ruined their lives, and she blamed _me_ for that when I set them free, and then she came _back_ to find more _slaves_ to turn into _human incubators_ just so she could use her arts and their blood to—to make that thing they used t-to res—to _resurrect Elektra_ after they _killed her_.”

Well. That was. That was a lot. Foggy gaped at him, struggling with the feeling of having just tripped over a freaking landmine.

Matt, meanwhile, was glaring at the floor. “So. You still want to call Brett?”

“N-No,” Foggy stammered.

“Good,” Matt growled. “Because I _really_ didn’t wanna have to talk about all that, but if it keeps you from sending Brett on a suicide mission, assuming he could even _find_ her, I guess it was worth it!”

And with that, Matt stalked into his bedroom, sliding the door shut behind him.

Foggy shriveled a little under the dual stares of Maggie and Claire. “I…I didn’t know it was gonna be something like that.”

Claire dragged her hand through her hair. “Are you even surprised?”

Yes. That was the horrible part. You would think that, by now, Foggy Nelson, cum laude graduate of Colombia, would stop being so shocked at the things Matt dealt with. But it was just…it was just a lot easier to go on living like Matt was the same as he’d always been (or, at least, the same as Foggy had always thought he was) and only worry about the vigilante stuff when it cropped up. And things had been good after Fisk, nice and _basically_ normal, so that, aside from still sometimes waking up terrified that Matt had died during the night, Foggy was mostly not having to think about the freaky parts of his best friend being Daredevil.

Until aliens somewhere decided to infect the planet with alien rain.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Maggie said grimly, face set.

Foggy put up a hand. “No, I should. I’m the one who messed this up.”

The look Maggie gave him said plainly that this was exactly why she thought he wasn’t qualified.

“To _apologize_ ,” Foggy insisted. When Maggie still didn’t look happy, he lowered his voice. “Look, I know he’s your son, but he and I have been family for _years_. You gotta trust us that we know how to take care of each other.”

Maggie’s eyes flashed, but she kept her voice down. “So why didn’t he tell me to call you when he woke up at the church? I asked if he had anyone. He said he didn’t.”

Foggy felt a stab of guilt, but that was seriously hitting below the belt. Foggy had no _idea_ why Matt hadn’t wanted help back then. Maybe because he really hadn’t wanted Foggy, but maybe because he’d already been back on that everyone-who-gets-close-to-me-gets-hurt thing, or maybe just because he’d been _concussed_ and who-knew-what-else from having a skyscraper dropped on him.

So he drew himself up. “You know as well as I do that he was messed up back then. But that doesn’t even matter—”

“Of course it matters,” she spat.

“Okay, it matters, but not as much as the fact that we moved past all that.”

“But did you work _through_ it?” Maggie demanded.

…Uh. Foggy folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not wasting time arguing with you about this. My best friend is in there right now, and I need to go make things right. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we’re both adults. I don’t need your permission. And _he_ doesn’t need your protection!”

“ _Shh_ ,” Maggie hissed, and Foggy realized he’d forgotten to keep his voice down at the end there. Well, it wasn’t like Matt couldn’t have been listening to the whole conversation if he’d wanted to.

Turning on his heel, Foggy marched across to the bedroom and tapped lightly on the door. He didn’t hear anything, but that meant Matt wasn’t telling him to go away, which was as good as an invitation. Slowly, Foggy slid the door open.

“Matt?”

The room was well-lit from the morning sun, but Foggy couldn’t see his best friend until he stepped further in. Oh, there. Matt was on the floor on the other side of his bed, tucked up in the very corner with his legs drawn up to his chest and his face pushed into his knees.

So obviously, this was gonna go _great_.

Foggy only hesitated for maybe a second before going over and sliding down to the floor just under the window, his back to the wall. He glanced sideways at Matt. “Buddy. I’m sorry.”

Matt didn’t raise his head. “I heard.”

“Really. I didn’t mean to…make you talk about all that stuff. I didn’t realize it was all connected.” Who would’ve thought that creepy old woman was part of the same cult that killed Elektra, _and_ resurrected her, _and_ trapped Matt under a building? And it wasn’t like Matt didn’t have plenty of other traumatic things in his life, but those three had to be pretty high up on the list.

Matt was quiet for a while. “You didn’t know,” he said at last, voice still muffled by his knees.

Foggy opened his mouth to say something about how that didn’t matter, except…it kinda did, didn’t it? Or _did_ it? There were at least ten different thoughts swirling through Foggy’s head as he tried to sort through this, but he didn’t even know where to start.

Maybe that didn’t matter. He’d come in here to apologize, and that was a simple enough goal. “I’m really sorry. I’m sorry I pushed you. I could tell you didn’t wanna talk about it, but…”

Matt finally raised his head, sad eyes drifting tiredly around Foggy’s face. “So why make me?”

Foggy took a deep breath and spoke carefully: “Because you’re not necessarily the best judge of what stuff you _should_ talk about, regardless of whether you want to.”

Matt raised his eyebrow a little at that as if to say, _fair_.

“We need, like, a code word or something,” Foggy decided.

“For what?”

“For if something’s going on with you that’s connected to, like, the worst shit. That way I know that you have a really good reason for not wanting to talk about it.”

Matt’s eyebrows drew closer together. “That’s the only good reason?”

“Well, no. Obviously we’ll have to make up other code words. But we definitely need one for, like, triggering stuff.”

Matt looked distinctly displeased. “Triggering stuff.”

“Yes, Matt,” Foggy said, patiently and deliberately. “You’re allowed to have triggers.”

“That’s not—it wasn’t—” He stopped talking.

“The thing is, um…” Oh no, Foggy’s throat was tightening. He stopped talking immediately and tried to swallow the lump there, but Matt’s eyes were already widening in panic, no doubt at how shaky Foggy’s voice suddenly sounded. Foggy swallowed again. “Sorry. Forget it.”

Matt didn’t scoot closer, which wasn’t a surprise since he still wasn’t great with initiating physical contact, but he was leaning forward. His eyes weren’t narrowed like Foggy was a case he wanted to crack; they were uncertain and _worried_. “What’s wrong?”

A very small part of Foggy that Foggy wasn’t particularly proud of wanted to say something like, _See, this is what it feels like when you shut down on us._ He shoved that thought into the back of his head. “It’s just…okay. Okay. Disclaimer: I haven’t tried to say this before, I haven’t even really given myself the…the time or permission to even _think_ it before, so if this comes out jumbled, I need you to…” What, read his mind and understand anyway? “Be patient.”

Matt gave a small, very serious nod. “You can tell me anything, Foggy.”

That nasty part of Foggy piped up: _But you don’t think you can tell me anything._ Foggy squelched that down. “It’s just…look. Since last night, I’ve been watching you getting beat up all the time, and stabbed, and basically _gutted_ , and…and I knew you were Daredevil, obviously, and I knew that was violent and stuff, but knowing that and _seeing_ it is different.”

“I didn’t want you to have to see this,” Matt said quietly.

And Foggy’s heart broke a little. “Don’t you get it? That’s the problem!” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Well, no. But it’s part of the problem. We were _best friends_ , Matt, and now—”

Matt visibly startled at his use of the past tense.

“We’re _still_ best friends,” Foggy said quickly. “But it’s like…you’re still this whole other person, and I keep thinking I’ve gotten used to that when I _haven’t_ , and I keep thinking I’m okay with that when I’m _not_ , and it just…it just really _sucks_ that you have this whole list of triggers because of all this traumatic shit you’ve been through, and I—I didn’t even _know!_ ”

Matt’s mouth was open, but he was silent.

“I don’t mean—” Foggy swore again under his breath. “Sorry. It’s not about me, I’m not trying to make this about me, I’m just…I’m trying to say…” His eyes were stinging, when did that happen? And how was he supposed to explain this without making Matt think he didn’t accept him? How was he supposed to explain what it was like to look at Matt and see the face of that guy he’d met in law school, that sorta weird but really awesome guy who, yeah, hadn’t had it _easy_ growing up, but he’d been _happy_ back then. He hadn’t had to deal with…mob bosses and human traffickers and ninjas and resurrected, murderous—

“Foggy.” Matt had inched closer, and that was his hand resting tentatively on Foggy’s arm.

Foggy blinked back tears. “I just want you to be okay again,” he whispered.

“I am okay, Foggy,” Matt said, and Foggy almost wanted to punch him because _no_ , he clearly was _not_ , but then Matt hurried to add, “I mean, I’m okay now. Back then, it…I…I wasn’t. At a lot of different points. I know that. But. That’s not…that’s not where I am now.”

Foggy _desperately_ wanted to believe that. “Promise me.”

“I promise.” Half of Matt’s mouth quirked upwards in a shy grin. “Think about it. I have you and Claire and Maggie and Karen. And you, Foggy, you know me now. In a way that you didn’t before. But you’re still here, you still want…” He broke off. “It’s good. That’s all.” He paused. “And we can make up the code word, if you want.”

“Or…” Foggy tried not to get his hopes up. “Or you could try, y’know, telling me some of this stuff. Sooner. Before I blunder into the minefield when I’m just trying to help.”

A crease appeared between Matt’s eyebrows. “You’re saying…you actually want to know? Not just about injuries—I know you want to know about that. But…the rest of it? The other parts?”

Foggy gaped at him. “ _Yes_ , I want to know. Have I not made that clear?”

“Not…not really, no.”

Oh. Well. “I do,” Foggy said firmly, emphatically. “I do want to know. I mean, I respect your right to not have to tell me everything, and I admit that I might kinda freak out over some of it and that might bother you, but yes, Matt, I really do want to know.”

Matt’s head inclined the slightest bit. Listening to Foggy’s heart. A second later, he glanced up towards Foggy in surprise. “You really mean that.”

“I really mean that.” And, because Matt sucked at initiating physical contact, Foggy took it upon himself to pull him into a (gentle) hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this was one of those chapters where the characters just Did Things and I was like "Okay, guys, I guess we're going here, sure, why not."


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY GUYS HERE'S THE DEAL.  
> All I wanted was to jump ahead to Season 2 and the Punisher stuff (and I gather from the comments that I was not alone). But. There was the Fisk fight to contend with. And I was like ??? what do I do with this??? And then I talked to LadyMaigrey (who is EXCELLENT at brainstorming, and if you need proof, read her stuff, it's fantastic) (and she's also excellent at causing Matt pain) and so here we are.
> 
> Warning *with a spoiler alert*: I've added a new tag for seizures. I honestly didn't expect this fic to turn into something this big and didn't even start toying with the idea of actually exploring the impact of Matt's repeated head trauma until a few chapters ago, so...now that's a thing.
> 
> Anyway, I'm not thrilled with this chapter, but I also really wanna get to the next stuff, so...enjoy!

Claire

She settled back onto the couch, leather creaking beneath her, just taking a moment to enjoy the relative stillness in the apartment. She’d had longer shifts than this, but none so…emotionally charged.

Maggie, however, was obviously not relaxed at all. The nun perched on the very edge of one of Matt’s chairs, like she was ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice, and she kept glancing over her shoulder towards Matt’s bedroom.

“They’ll be fine,” Claire murmured.

Maggie’s mouth twisted in a quick grimace; she bit her lip and seemed to debate with herself for a while before blurting out, “Foggy Nelson isn’t exactly the most tactful person on the planet.”

Claire yawned. “Just going in that room after Matt is the best thing Foggy could do, even if he ends up saying something stupid.”

Maggie’s gaze sharpened as she peered across the living room at Claire. “What makes you say that?”

No, Claire realized, her gaze wasn’t sharp. It was hungry. Hungry for all the scraps of insight she could get into Matt, maybe? Claire really should be taking this time to rest, and Maggie’s need to know wasn’t urgent. But Claire made herself a hypocrite every time she called Matt out on his martyr tendencies (not that he’d figured that out yet). She forced herself to sit up. “I just think…going in there means Foggy’s not leaving Matt alone. And being left alone is kind of a…a thing. For Matt.”

Maggie immediately dropped her gaze.

Claire still wasn’t exactly _overflowing_ in sympathy for this woman. But she wasn’t heartless either, and besides, it was obvious how much Matt cared about her. “You came back,” she pointed out gently.

“After the damage had been done.”

True, but that was only part of the story. “The thing about being an ER nurse…you can’t help people if you let yourself get overwhelmed by all the damage that’s already done. You have to focus on what you can do to make things better.”

Maggie blinked gratefully and sat up a little straighter. “Thank you, Claire.” One corner of her mouth turned up in a slightly sheepish grin that looked very like Matt when he wanted to say or do something that he thought might be overstepping a boundary somehow. “He made a good choice when he chose you.”

“Since I can count his good choices on one hand, I’ll take that as a very high compliment,” Claire said lightly, to cover the way she warmed inside at the praise.

Maggie hummed knowingly. “To be fair, he didn’t have much to do with you rescuing him from that dumpster. That was your choice.”

“Yeah.” Sometimes Claire couldn’t help but think of that night, of how totally in over her head she’d been, when Matt had acted like it was, well, just another Tuesday. The man she’d met that night had seemed so sure of himself, too focused on his mission to leave room for doubt or hesitation. The man she knew now was so much more…vulnerable. Layered. _Honest_. “We both made the choice.”

Foggy

Matt was the first to wiggle, breaking the hug. Well, no, the wiggling wasn’t enough to break the hug, but Foggy was an expert by now in judging how long Matt could handle a hug, so he let go and cleared his throat. “So, um, yeah,” he said, feeling a bit awkward and plowing on anyway. “I really do wanna hear about, y’know, the stuff that happens at night. Even if it’s not life-threatening.”

Matt half-smirked. “Even if it’s really gory?”

Foggy made a face. “I do _not_ need to know the details of you, like, breaking someone’s kneecap, or whatever. But if it affects _you_ , then, yeah, I wanna know.”

The smirk faded; Matt nodded very seriously. “Thank you, Foggy.”

“What else is family for?” Foggy asked, just to see Matt’s quick blink, a silent double-take. As if, after all these years, Matt still forgot that he was an honorary Nelson. “Anyway, you’re like fifty percent muscle, so help me up.”

Rolling his eyes, Matt extended a hand, and sure enough, pulled Foggy up hardly any effort at all. They ventured together back into the living room, where Claire and Maggie immediately (and suspiciously) stopped talking.

Foggy leaned towards Matt. “Were they talking about us?” he whispered.

Matt inclined his head slightly. “A little.”

Before Foggy could figure out if he wanted to ask what they’d been saying, his phone started buzzing loudly in his pocket. He grabbed it and was hit with fifty pounds of reality when he saw Karen’s name.

 _Karen_. Their coworker. At the office which they shared, where both Foggy and Matt should be. Bracing himself, Foggy held the phone up to his ear. “Hey?” he asked guiltily.

“Hey, is Matt dying?”

Foggy wasn’t sure what it said about Karen that she was calling Foggy first when she was worried about Matt. He wished he could remember if she’d started calling him first before or after Matt told them he and Claire were together. Anyway, he made a face. “At the moment?”

There was the sound in the background of Karen dropping something, an over-stuffed file by the sound of it. “What’s wrong? Where are you guys?”

“We’re at his place, and it’s…okay, mostly. It’s just…you know…” There was no way this was gonna go over well.

“No,” Karen breathed. “He didn’t go out in it? The rain?”

“Yep,” Foggy said, popping the _p_.

This was met with muffled cursing. “I knew it,” she hissed. “I _knew_ this would happen.”

“Funny, because I was naively optimistic. I guess that’s my role in our little triad, though. I’m the one always hoping for the best, not looking for catastrophe in every dark corner of—”

“I’m coming over,” she interrupted.

Matt’s eyes widened and he shook his head wildly.

“Uh…” Foggy said, stalling for time and trying to balance all the relevant interests suddenly at stake before deciding, you know what? That was no longer his job. He thrust his phone at Matt. “You talk to her.”

Looking very much like a dog that had just had its head stuffed into a cone, Matt managed a quiet, “Hi, Karen.” There was a pause, probably while Karen yelled at him. His eyebrows tightened. “Someone was in trouble!...I was _helping_ , Karen…she couldn’t have handled it like I can…no, Claire’s here, too…yes, I realize that they both have to handle me, but that’s still better than—you can’t just assume— _you would have done the same thing!_ ”

That outburst led to two solid minutes of Matt standing there in silence, probably while Karen spelled out exactly why anything she did to help an endangered citizen would have been less self-destructive.

“No,” Matt said at last. “I’m sure,” he added a second later. “Sorry, Karen.” A pause. “Not that it means anything, but I…I really am sorry.” Rubbing at the back of his neck, he lowered his head. “Yeah. Sorry.” Then he held out the phone. “Foggy?”

Foggy took it, feeling like he was accepting a live grenade. “Karen?”

Her voice was brittle. “He doesn’t want me to come.”

Foggy glanced at Matt, who stood very still with his head angled towards the floor and his lips pressed together. “I mean, are you even surprised?”

“I can help!” Karen protested hotly.

“I guess it’s just…kinda crowded over here, that’s all.”

Karen huffed. “So I should go over while one of you takes a break. We should have shifts.”

No, because that still meant one more person witnessing everything that was still to come, and it had been hard enough getting Matt to agree to let Foggy and Maggie _stay_. Foggy lowered his voice (not that it would make a difference with Matt hovering over his shoulder like an anxious moth). “That’s a good idea, you always were the smartest. But, sadly, I don’t think Matt’s really…up for it.”

“Yeah, I got that,” she muttered, and hung up.

Grimacing, Foggy stuffed his phone back in his pocket. “Well…”

“Thank you,” Matt said, very quietly, still not looking up from the floor. “Sorry.”

There wasn’t really anything Foggy could say to that, so he just shrugged. An awkward silence fell over the room.

But, as was usually the case with Matt, the awkward silence didn’t last long before it was interrupted by a new crisis. Or the start of one, at least. He jerked his right arm, shaking out the wrist with a grimace.

“What is it this time?” Maggie demanded.

“Um…” Matt apparently had to think about it, which…just…yeah. Foggy could vividly remember every violent encounter he, Foggy, had ever had in his life, so it was weird. “Not sure. It’s going well, just…whatever I’m hitting is pretty hard.” He shook out his wrist again.

“Well, at least you’re winning,” Foggy said sardonically.

Matt’s lips quirked in a roguish smile, which only dimmed slightly when his head snapped to the side. He rubbed at the area just above his left ear. “Ow.”

Foggy rolled his eyes.

A few seconds later, Matt’s head was snapped back again, this time straight back, followed almost immediately by a full-body arch that made him take a staggering step to regain his balance. This happened again, leaving him wincing. “Oh,” he said abruptly. “I have the suit.”

“The devil suit?” Foggy and Maggie blurted out at the same time.

“Yeah, because that…” He arched again. “That felt like getting thrown into the side of a dumpster, except muted. Which means…” He flicked his hand like he was connecting two dots midair, only to be interrupted mid-gesture with a bitten-off yelp. He gritted his teeth. “It’s Fisk.”

Foggy felt his eyes widen. “You fought _Fisk?_ Like, him personally, not just his bodyguard goons?”

Matt took a second between, apparently, getting hit in the face by a giant mob boss to snark, “You really think he’d go down by anything short of that?”

“Kind of…yeah. He seems more like the kinda guy to get other people to do his dirty work.”

“Only until he’s backed into a corner,” Matt said darkly.

And it was yet another reminder of how little Foggy knew about what Matt really dealt with. Glancing around the room, he felt slightly validated to see how surprised Claire and Maggie also looked. Surprised and impressed.

As for Matt, something seemed to change with the realization of who exactly his enemy was this time around. His sightless eyes lit up, glowing with some dark energy that Foggy had never seen before. The closest would be at trial, when the other side made a mistake and Matt was honing in. But at trial, he still had to be controlled. Reserved, at least somewhat. On the outside.

Now? Now he made no attempt to hide how…how…how he _reveled_ in the memory of taking Fisk down. And it was just a memory! Foggy could only imagine how intense that glow in his eyes would be in real time, facing a real enemy.

It would be terrifying.

Well, it was terrifying as long as Matt was winning.

“ _Ngh_.” Matt let out a grunt, taking another hit to the head and looking slightly dazed. The fight didn’t let up, though, because of course it didn’t. Ducking his head, he drew up his hands to guard his face, but he kept flinching again and again, stumbling backwards like he could escape the pain. Or maybe the hits were just that hard?

And all the blocking in the world didn’t stop him from suddenly doing a bobblehead impression, head popping back and forth as blood streamed from one nostril. Foggy assumed the new helmet was helping a little, but Matt still kept stumbling backwards until he was pressed up to the dividing wall by the kitchen, flinching.

Foggy _knew_ , obviously, that Matt survived this. But now, as Foggy stood there helplessly, staring at his best friend backed against a wall and still taking hits, knowing that _Fisk_ was the one beating him up…Foggy felt a flutter of worry in his gut. (Or maybe it was anger. Foggy preferred to think of it as…aggressive worry.)

Foggy was still staring, waiting for something to go horribly wrong, when the tide seemed to change. Matt pushed away from the wall. His eyes took on that dark gleam again, creepy and absolutely nothing like Foggy’s best friend. Less than a minute after that, Matt finally lowered his hands, coming down off the balls of his feet.

For a long time, no one moved or said anything.

“It’s over?” Foggy ventured at last.

Matt caught his breath. “Think so.”

“Wow,” Claire murmured, getting up from the couch. Matt tilted his head questioningly in her direction, but she didn’t elaborate, instead swooping in to run her hands up through his hair. Prioritizing his health over fanning his ego. “How’s your concussion? Looked like you took some solid hits to the head.”

“Eh.” Matt all but waved it off. Not that he made any effort to get out from under her touch.

“Matt.” Claire’s voice became clipped in warning.

“Seriously. I was fine then, I’m fine now.” And Matt definitely looked fine. More than fine, really. The grim light hadn’t faded from his eyes; instead, he looked more sure of himself than Foggy had ever seen. Not just in the I’m-done-apologizing-for-who-I-am kind of way, where Matt had looked _defiant_ but also…really scared underneath. This was different. This was Matt fresh off the biggest victory of his life.

And maybe one that, in his mind, made up for all the lies and other shit he’d put his friends through?

Foggy wasn’t really sure how he felt about that.

But he didn’t want to burst Matt’s bubble _now_. Like, they all kinda needed this win, even if it was a little bittersweet for Foggy. So Foggy pulled back his lips in a big smile and clapped Matt on the shoulder. “Good job, buddy.”

Normally, that kind of praise would get Matt ducking his head and shuffling his feet and generally doing his bashful-wounded-duck routine. Instead, Matt lifted his head higher and flashed Foggy a smile, apparently soaking it all in too much to reflexively try to shake off the praise.

Okay, so it was a _tiny bit_ troubling that Matt was more unambiguously proud of beating a mobster into unconsciousness than he was of, say, drafting a beautiful motion or making a good objection or any of the other things Foggy tried to compliment him for, but…Foggy was trying to get over himself about that. This was just the way things were now. (Really, it was the way things had _always been_. Foggy just hadn’t known.)

“I feel like the new suit should get at least some of the credit,” Claire remarked, lips twitching with amusement as she regarded Matt. “Which means, as the one who suggested you get actual armor, _I_ should get at least some of the credit.”

Matt turned back toward her like a…like a heat-seeking missile turning toward heat, or something less violent like a sunflower turning toward the sun. “You’re the reason I’m still alive,” he said softly. “You get credit for every good thing I do.”

“And vice versa,” she said, just as softly, cupping his face.

It was a little awkward and Foggy wasn’t sure whether he and Maggie should, like, make a discrete exit or something now that Matt was being all heroic and mostly-uninjured, but before he could do anything, Matt stumbled standing up like one of his legs had gone out. His forehead banged into Claire’s, making her jerk back, swearing, knees bending under his sudden weight.

Foggy darted forward. “Buddy?” Matt had caught himself, mostly, although his hands on Claire’s shoulders looked like they were more for his sake than hers. His mouth was half-open, his sightless eyes drifting aimlessly. Foggy grabbed on, just in case, with his hands holding Matt up under his arms. “Matt?”

No response. Not even a head twitch.

“Shh,” Claire breathed, although Foggy didn’t know who she was talking to. She kept her voice level. “Matt?”

Slowly, Matt’s eyes closed as his eyebrows raised, like he was dizzy or trying not to pass out, and he wet his lips again and again. He swayed back on his heels; Foggy shifted behind him, trying to brace him.

“What happened?” Claire demanded, her hands on either side of his face. Maggie came up behind them, hovering.

Still no response.

Okay, Foggy was quietly panicking now. “Claire?”

“I think…” Very un-Claire fear flashed in her eyes as they flicked over Matt’s slack face. “He might be having a seizure.”

Foggy gaped at her. “But he’s not—”

“Not all seizures have visible convulsions.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Matt!”

Nothing.

“Time it,” she snapped at Maggie, who fumbled for her phone.

“What do we do?” Foggy breathed, holding on tighter to his best friend. “Like…lie him down or something?”

Claire stared intently at Matt. “He should come out of it any second. If not, we’re calling an ambulance.”

Foggy was kinda thinking they should be calling an ambulance anyway.

Instead, Matt stirred; he gave a slow shake of his head and swayed again, kept upright in his Claire-and-Foggy sandwich. “What…” He blinked heavily. “What…”

Claire was already steering them slowly towards the couch. “It’s okay, you’re okay. Just sit down for us.”

Matt did as instructed, creepily compliant, and basically melted into the couch. “Claire?” His hand drifted towards her.

She caught it, twining their fingers together as she sat next to him while Foggy stood by the arm of the couch with no idea what to do. “Right here,” she said, stroking her thumb over the back of Matt’s hand. “Everyone’s okay.”

“What…what happened?”

“I think,” she began carefully, “you might have had a seizure.”

Matt’s expression made Foggy’s stomach flip and he sounded strangled as he asked, “What?”

“Just a small one.” Her voice was just a few compassionate notches shy of matter-of-fact; if she had any personal emotions at all about this, none of them were sneaking through her professionalism mask. “There’s lots of different kinds. You just kind of…checked out on us, for a bit.”

“But…” Matt dragged his hand over his face. “I don’t remember. I don’t…”

“That’s okay. With the amount of head trauma you’ve taken, it even makes sense. I don’t know for sure, but it’s possible you’ve had them before and just not noticed because they were fast or you were asleep or something. And…” She hesitated, and a crease appeared between Matt’s eyebrows. She pressed on. “Now that you’ve had at least one, it’s…very possible that you’ll have more.”

Matt leaned forward, elbows on his knees, head in his hands, and took along, shuddering breath.

Claire gave him a second. Several seconds, actually. She was intuitive, Foggy had to give her that; he could only imagine how scary this was for Matt right now. (It would be scary enough for _Foggy_ , but he wasn’t the one who’d found his life’s mission in fighting criminals at night.) “Matt?” she began at last.

He didn’t say anything or lift his head, but the slow, rise and fall of his shoulders had evened out a bit, showing that he was staving off panic, at least, so…that was something.

Claire’s voice was carefully controlled, leaving no room for doubt. “We need to go to a hospital. It’ll be quick, in and out. But I need to get some scans, and…I want to get you on some medication. If I’m right about…the rest of this, it’s stuff you’ll need regularly. Which means you’ll need an actual prescription, not whatever I can steal. Okay?” He still didn’t respond. She slid her hand under his chin, gently raising his face to her until…until everyone else in the room could see all the fear there. “Okay?”

Squeezing his eyes shut, he nodded once.

Foggy had never imagined a scenario where Matt agreeing to go to a hospital would make the whole situation _scarier_.

Foggy’s imagination wasn’t very accurate.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: cliffhanger. Also for a panic attack because I couldn't get this idea out of my head.

Matt

In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out. Matt sat on the couch, concentrating on his breathing. Foggy was calling a taxi (at least it wasn’t an ambulance, Matt would not…be able to _handle_ an ambulance) and Maggie was in the bathroom running water for some reason and Claire was calling someone from the hospital. Matt wasn’t trying to listen in, but he caught the gist of it anyway. She was trying to make sure their visit was as quick and unobtrusive as possible. He doubted it would make a difference. He appreciated her effort anyway.

And he appreciated that everyone else was distracting themselves, giving him just a few moments to…to think about this. He still felt sore from Fisk’s hits, but that was nothing compared to the exhaustion that had sunk deep into his bones. Like his body was made of mud, thick and wet and heavy. And numb. He pressed the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose, the pressure providing a counterpoint to the spinning dizziness that made his equilibrium sway first to the right, then to the left.

Deep breaths. In, hold, and out.

Footsteps came closer, unaccompanied by a voice, and with everyone’s scents blurring together, Matt didn’t realize who it was until Maggie reached out to gently pry his hand away from his face. The simple fact that she’d been silent on her approach should’ve been enough for Matt to figure out that it was her, not Foggy or Claire, but…logical reasoning seemed to be a skill slipping quickly from his grasp.

“You okay?” she asked, striking that perfect tone she always found. Not quite uninterested, but nothing melodramatic.

“Yeah.” What else was he supposed to say?

“Hmm.” The noise wasn’t accusatory. It was more like she was politely letting him know that she saw through his bullshit.

Maggie was doing something, moving around, but he couldn’t tell what was going on until he heard droplets landing on the surface of water. A second later, he flinched at the touch of a warm, wet washcloth on his cheek. “Mom…” He reached up.

She easily blocked him, lowering his wrist to his lap with one hand while the other resolutely continued dabbing at his face. “If you show up at a hospital looking like a serial killer, there will be questions.”

There would be questions anyway. About his scars. About his other injuries. About whatever might sneak up on him from his past _while he was at the hospital_. And definitely about…about the seizures. He hoped Foggy was thinking up some brilliant arguments about why there was nothing to worry about because Matt wasn’t so confident he’d be able to come up with anything coherent on his own.

In the meantime, there was something soothing about Maggie’s soft, repetitive touch. Jack never touched him unkindly, but his gestures were almost always both rough and affectionate at the same time. Maggie was different. Not better, not worse. Just different.

“Okay.” Claire came back around, voice brisk and businesslike, like she thought that acting like nothing earthshattering had happened would convince him it hadn’t. “One of my friends is on-shift. We’re still gonna have to, y’know, go through all the paperwork and stuff, she won’t lose her job over this, but she said she can kind of…prioritize us.”

Matt felt a stab of guilt. He opened his mouth.

“As a favor to _me_ ,” Claire added firmly before he could say anything.

Maybe so, but Matt still felt guilty that Claire was using her favors to benefit him. It was all too complex a concept for him to explain right now, however, so he didn’t bother except to communicate his dismay with a frown that no one paid any attention to.

“Our ride’s here,” Foggy announced a few hazy minutes later, and they all got up and everyone else waited while Matt put on his shoes (the whole process seemed to have several more steps than normal, and his fingers weren’t quite as adept as they should be, but at least no one swooped in to try to _help_ him, so it was…fine, really) and got his cane and made sure his glasses (his real ones, not the cheap ones Foggy had bought) were securely in place. Then they all headed out to file into the cab. No, not a cab; an uber, something big like a minivan with enough room for them all to sit.

All Matt cared about was that he got a seat by the window so he could rest his head against its smooth surface, trying to ignore the humming of the engine running and the tiny jolts and vibrations he felt as the vehicle pulled out into traffic.

A smoker rode in this vehicle about four days ago. Someone else had smeared something disgusting into the floor, probably from their shoe. It all clashed with the heavy smell of coffee from this morning and someone else’s floral perfume.

Matt closed his eyes and tried to meditate away the nausea. He succeeded, at least, at distracting himself from worrying about the hospital until the vehicle rolled to a stop. Doors opened, and he winced; he could already hear it, muffled though it was by the hospital’s outer walls. The beeps, the voices, the whirring of machinery.

And it was only going to get worse.

But he couldn’t just sit here. Had to get up, always had to get back up. He pushed himself up, moving on autopilot to get out of the car and follow Foggy into the hospital.

Loud, clipped voices slammed into his ears, a hundred different tense conversations. Commands and requests and hurried assurances. Reports of data in encoded in another language. People crying, people praying, people telling each other they didn’t know what was gonna happen. And the _smells_. Sanitizer and bleach colliding with unwashed clothes and sickness.

Matt felt the ghost of Jack’s hands holding his. An ache flared at the base of his skull, mirrored by a stinging sensation behind his eyes and a suddenly dry, tight throat.

“Buddy?”

Matt blinked and exhaled shortly out through his nose, dragging his attention back to the press of his feet against the flat surface of the hospital lobby floor. Claire was at the front desk with Maggie, but Foggy had dropped back. His hand, Matt noticed belatedly, was on his shoulder.

Matt shifted his weight. “Sorry. What?”

“Nothing at all, just checking on you,” Foggy said, all false cheer.

Matt had neither the energy nor the inclination to call him out on whatever he was leaving unsaid. It was a relief to hear Claire making her way back to them, now holding a clipboard and a pen. The pen had been cleaned recently; the clipboard hadn’t. Matt tried not to recoil from the smells.

“Good news,” she said, voice low. “My friend pulled some strings, and we should be able to get you in for an MRI in the next hour or so.”

“MRI?” Matt blurted out, gripping his cane tighter.

“It’s one of the best scans at identifying any brain abnormalities that could lead to more seizures in the future. Which I’m guessing is the main thing you want to know, right?”

Clenching his jaw, Matt fell silent. She was right, and they all knew it, but he still felt strangely blindsided.

“Is your friend a radiologist?” Foggy asked doubtfully.

“No, but she’s married to one.” Claire handed Matt the clipboard. “First three sheets are general intake stuff, the last two are MRI-specific. They didn’t have braille, but I can—”

“I got it,” Foggy said, and Matt felt the tiniest bit relieved. Not that Claire didn’t already know his medical history, but Foggy was more experienced at helping Matt fill out various forms over the years and was able to make an otherwise uncomfortable process mostly painless.

Still, the hour passed slowly. Matt and Foggy finished the forms, leaving Matt with nothing to do except try not to fidget until a nurse about Claire’s age called his name. Claire, Foggy, and Maggie all stood up too, and all their oppressive attention suddenly didn’t seem so bad in comparison to what was waiting for him.

“Hi, Mr. Murdock,” the new nurse greeted him, not for a second confusing him with Foggy, leading Matt to wonder just what Claire had told her friend about him. Or maybe he just radiated misery. “My name’s Bianca. If you follow me, we’ll just make sure you’re properly prepped and then you’ll be good to go.”

She led him into a side room and quickly checked whether he had anything that could be affected by the magnetism, like tattoos or meal piercings or implants. His hoodie and sweatpants were deemed unoffensive, which meant he didn’t have to change into a gown. Matt tried to hold onto that one miniscule blessing.

Then she led him (them) into the next room.

The MRI machine was huge, taking up over half the room, and it was already humming. Matt stopped dead in the doorway. It wasn’t just humming, it was _pulsing_. And it wasn’t even scanning anything, which meant the pulsing was just going to get worse.

No, it was fine. It was fine. These procedures happened every day. He could deal with…whatever it was doing.

“Mr. Murdock?”

He realized belatedly that Bianca had been talking to him. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, what?”

“I was just saying that I expect the test to take about an hour, but it’ll depend on what Dr. Bateman thinks. You’ll have to give me your glasses and cane. Your friends can watch over them, or I can put them in a locker for you…?”

Of course. Stupid to think he’d be able to wear the glasses in the machine. He hadn’t really _thought_ that, he just…hadn’t thought about it. It was just, he’d rather wear the stupid gown if it meant keeping his glasses. Wordless, he passed his cane to Claire, then forced himself to take off his glasses. He kept his eyes aimed towards the floor as he handed these, too, over to Claire.

Bianca was already moving on. “Can you hold out your hand?” When he did, she dropped a flimsy packet bearing two light objects into his palm. “These are earplugs, since it can get pretty loud, and Claire said your hearing is, um…sensitive.”

No. No way was he putting anything in his ears on top of crawling into what was basically a coffin. Matt turned toward Claire, the protest rising fast to his lips.

“Trust me,” she said firmly. “I don’t know what kind of damage the machine might do without them.”

Shit. Matt wished he still had his cane to hold. Not trusting himself to speak, he nodded once and shoved the packet deep into his pocket for now.

Bianca only hesitated a moment before determinedly continuing with this orientation from hell. “I also have headphones for you, in case you want to listen to music. You can also use them to communicate with Dr. Bateman and one other person that you want in the room with you.”

“Foggy,” Matt said immediately, cringing at the tightness audible in his own voice.

If Maggie was hurt by Matt’s selection, she didn’t show it. Claire, however, curled in on herself ever so slightly. No one else would probably have even noticed, but to Matt it stood out like a beacon. Matt’s stomach twisted, but there was no way he could figure out how to explain why he wanted Foggy, so he didn’t try.

“Do you want the headphones?” Bianca asked, apparently oblivious to the tension, or maybe determined to ignore it in the hopes that it would go away.

“Please,” Matt managed to say. He hated headphones, but if there was one person he knew could distract him from what was about to happen, it was Foggy.

“Awesome,” Bianca chirped. “We’ll get those right out to you. Now, you’ll have to stay completely within the tunnel for the entirety of the test, and you’ll have to remain as still as possible, or else we might need to redo it. Do you need to use the bathroom or anything first?”

Matt shook his head.

“Okay, great. I’ll grab Dr. Bateman, and we’ll get started. If everyone but Mr. Murdock and, um, Foggy could follow me…”

With that, she left the room. Maggie and Claire each squeezed Matt’s hand—Claire’s a lingering touch—before following her.

Foggy took a deep breath. “Cool,” he said, an obvious sign that he was about to launch into nervous chatter. “So, what kind of commentary do you want over the headset? I mean, the room’s kinda boring, not much to report there, but I have yet to share my thoughts on the Star Wars sequels. You keep acting uninterested, but I know you’re dying to know every specific reason why I can now hold my head up with pride as I claim that the prequels were better. And now that you’ll be a captive audience, so to speak…” He paused. “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”

Wetting his lips, Matt shook his head again.

“Cool. So, yeah, what’s your preference? Star Wars? Or I could look up some recent Supreme Court cases and try to bore you to death.”

Matt was rubbing his fingers together, concentrating more on the repetitive sensation than whatever Foggy was saying. “Star Wars is fine.” It was going to be awful no matter what.

Before Foggy could keep talking, the door opened again. Bianca had returned, accompanied by a woman whom Matt assumed was the radiologist. Dr. Bateman and Bianca used the same shampoo.

Dr. Bateman stepped forward, giving Matt a quick rundown of the procedure, mostly repeating what Bianca had already said. Then, before Matt had time to really process what was about to happen, he was lying down on the table with earplugs and headphones muffling the world, trapping him in his own head. The table started to roll; his shoulders and arms brushed the walls of the tunnel as the table clicked into place, completely engulfed.

He swallowed.

Was this what it felt like to Elektra? Did they resurrect her before or after taking her out of that coffin?

Don’t think that.

A second later, the machine roared to life. The humming and pulsing before was nothing compared to this; it was deafening. He could no longer hear his own heartbeat as it thudded painfully in his chest.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Foggy’s voice sparked to life in his ear, staticky, making him flinch. “ _Hey, buddy. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I don’t really know how not to startle you, though, unless I just talk nonstop. Which I assure you I am prepared to do._ ”

Deep breaths.

“ _Anyway, I just want to go on record saying that the most egregious sin of the sequels was not any of the flashy problems that flare up in the comment sections. No, my friend, the most egregious sin was their handling of C-3PO. He deserved better, Matt. His sacrifice should’ve meant something, that’s all._ ”

Deep breaths. This was fine. Foggy chattered on and Matt didn’t—couldn’t—tune him out, exactly, but didn’t—couldn’t—focus, either. Not past everything else. The roaring of the machine, the way his breath bounced back at him from the low ceiling. The pressure of the headphones clamped over his ears. The fact that if he wanted— _needed_ —to get up, he couldn’t. The fact that he couldn’t even hear if something was going wrong, wouldn’t even know if he needed to break free.

_You’re not claustrophobic, are you?_

Of course he wasn’t. But he _couldn’t hear_. Could barely even hear Foggy’s voice now; it sounded weirdly distant, faint, muffled.

Deep breaths. He closed his eyes. Meditate, he just had to—

Something hit him hard in the chest, knocking the wind out of him.

“ _Sir._ ” That was the doctor’s voice, stern, but also from over a mile away. “ _You need to hold still._ ”

He squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn’t sense the hits coming.

His past self was in another fight; couldn’t be too bad, and he had the suit for protection at this point, but every tiny jostle set off alarm klaxons in Matt’s brain. His breathing was nothing more than anxious bursts of air.

Something was wrong. Where, though? Where was the danger? He had no idea. Was Foggy okay? What about Claire and Maggie? It wasn’t like this hospital hadn’t been attacked before. First Frank Castle, shooting it up in pursuit of his target. Then the _Hand_. He could barely hear them in the best of times—no way he could hear them now. And he couldn’t protect anyone even if he heard them, trapped like this.

Something hit him again, on the head this time. Not falling rubble from Midland Circle collapsing over him, but the thunderous machine almost sounded the same as that explosion and the skyscraper tumbling down.

His hands trembled uncontrollably; he curled them into fists.

_You’re not claustrophobic, are you?_

He heard Foggy’s voice, muted, but deciphering the words was impossible. This was bad, this was a death trap, this entire hospital was a death trap. His fingertips went numb, his heart slammed against his ribs, and he could still feel his lungs inflating and deflating but there was suddenly no oxygen in his system.

His eyes snapped open. “I can’t breathe!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: I realize that you can normally not wear headphones while getting your brain scanned. But...I want headphones. So. Maybe these are cool under-the-back-of-the-head headphones that don't interfere with the test as much, or maybe this is an AU with better technology. Shhhh, don't worry about it.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of you requested a shorter break after cliffhanger chapters, which...ah, fair. Please enjoy!
> 
> Friendly reminder, however, that Matt is not a reliable narrator.

Matt

He jerked, hitting the tunnel’s ceiling, trying to sit up, trying to shimmy out of the tunnel. “I can’t—Fog—I can’t—I can’t breathe!”

The machine’s thunder sputtered and died, and suddenly he heard the doctor’s voice clear as a spike driving into his ringing ears. “ _Mr. Murdock, hold still and we’ll get you out of there. You need to hold still._ ”

Hold still? He couldn’t hold still. His hands and arms were shaking, lungs aching. The mind controlled the body, but his mind was spiraling in panic.

Finally, finally, the table started to move. Matt flattened back onto it, muscles clenched with the effort of holding still, of getting a _grip_ on himself. By the time the table was free from the tunnel, his entire body was trembling like it no longer belonged to him. He scrambled to sit up.

Someone dove in; Matt sensed motion and heat coming towards him, and he reflexively threw his hands up. He was just trying to get in guard, but the other person was already so close that Matt’s fist hit flesh. A familiar voice yelped.

Confusion set in because that sounded like— “Foggy?”

“Shit, _yeah_ , it’s me.” The motion and heat came close again, this time layered with Foggy’s unique scent. “I’m just putting my hands on you before you fall off the table or something.” This warning was followed by Foggy’s hands on Matt’s shoulders. He lowered his voice. “ _Please_ try not to do anything crazy,” he whispered, probably too quiet for the doctor to hear, but Matt wasn’t really capable of calculating that right now.

To his horror, Matt felt his throat tighten, strained, as a stinging sensation started up behind his eyes. Stupid, stupid, nothing was even _wrong_ , he’d simply thrown all his training aside and panicked for absolutely no reason in front of Foggy and a complete stranger, _stupid_ —

“Fogs,” he gasped, because he was terrified that if he sat there in silence for a second longer he’d start _crying_ , and then saying Foggy’s name made sense because he needed Foggy’s attention, he needed to know, “Where’s—where’s Claire? Where’s my mom? Are they okay?”

“Um—” Foggy’s breathing stuttered for a second. He lowered his voice. “You can’t tell?”

Stupid, he was being stupid. Shutting his eyes, Matt tried to cast his senses out to the hallway or the lobby or wherever Claire and Maggie might be, but it was like stretching a rubber band—too far and it snapped back, everything closing in on him again. He shuddered, squeezing the edge of the table to keep from leaping off; he wasn’t entirely convinced his legs were ready for that. “Fogs, could you—could you just check?”

“…Yeah, buddy, of course.” Foggy pulled his hands away slowly and, judging by the way his head turned, exchanged some kind of look with the doctor. He headed for the door but didn’t even have the chance to open it; someone else was already bursting through.

The nurse. Bianca. “Mr. Murdock,” she said briskly, professionally, heading straight towards him. “Let’s get you somewhere quiet, all right? Just follow me.”

His anxiety recoiled at the mere thought of going somewhere unfamiliar, let alone following a stranger to get there, but the need to get away from the machine outweighed it. His feet moved to follow; she led him out of the room and down a hall. Farther, he thought, from where Foggy was talking to Claire and Maggie, but before he could protest, he sucked in a breath as his body clenched around a phantom hit to his ribs. He was too overwhelmed to figure out how to breathe through it.

“Right this way, Mr. Murdock.” She showed him into an exam room. It was quieter here, at least. “You can sit down right here. Or lie down, if you want.” She patted an exam table and its papery covering.

There were also chairs against the wall to the right, less exposed, but it occurred to him that anything but following her direction would lead to questions, maybe even _concern_ , so instead he stepped forward and pushed himself up onto the table, sitting there with his hands clasped tightly were they hung down between his knees.

There was movement, sound; Bianca closing the door. And now that Foggy couldn’t see him, now that Matt was just _sitting_ there with nothing to distract him, he was no longer able to keep holding the tears back. They rolled down his face, over his jaw, down his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, covering his face with his hands. “I’m sorry—I’ve never—done that—before—I don’t—I don’t know—why—I couldn’t—I can’t—I can’t—” He forced himself to shut up, sucking in a breath before he hyperventilated again.

“You’re far from the first person to have a panic attack in that machine,” Bianca said.

Matt thought there was a hint of… _something_ in her voice, he didn’t know what, just something that suggested she was holding something back, but that train of thought dissolved a second later.

“Can I sit?” she asked, gesturing at the spot next to him on the exam table.

He’d rather she leave him alone. No, he didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t know what he wanted. He nodded, fighting to at least level out his breathing.

The table and its paper covering shifted as she settled down beside him. “You know,” she murmured, “it sounds like you’ve been through a lot. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Easy for her to say that. They probably paid her to say that, anyway. Keeping patients happy was an important part of not getting sued.

But Bianca kept talking, adding facts to bolster her statement. “From what Claire says, you already had a fresh concussion even before you had your seizure, and then we stuck you in that machine…and that’s on top of everything else.”

His breathing was getting deeper now, finding a rhythm. The shaking had mostly stopped, too, except for leftover tremors in his hands. Wiping at the remaining tears, he lowered his hands to clasp them in his lap. “Everything else?” he whispered.

No sooner were the words out then he felt flinched at the impact of an old hit. He had no idea what fight was responsible, but it must’ve been sometime after fighting Fisk and sometime before fighting the Punisher. The red suit did its job twofold: not only protecting him, but scaring off the bad guys so they didn’t even try to land a punch. (Foggy insisted that this had nothing to do with the suit being intimidating or symbolic or “whatever” and everything to do with the fact that it made Matt recognizable. Matt had given up trying to argue the point.)

Bianca tilted her head, studying him. “You went out in the rain, didn’t you?”

She must think he was so stupid. A blind man running out, now forced to relive every injury he’d ever gotten. Forced to make his friends deal with all those injuries, too. “I, uh…”

“It was to help someone, right?”

He turned towards her. “What?”

“Just…don’t freak out.” One of her hands moved to rest on his bicep, and an irrational part of his brain thought it was a defensive move—preemptively blocking him—before his rational mind reminded him that she was a nurse and was just trying to keep him calm. (Ha—good luck with that.) “I know you’re Daredevil.”

Every generalized threat he’d been anticipating suddenly coalesced into this woman siting next to him. He lurched off the table, like she’d be able to _smell_ vigilantism on his skin. “What—no—what?”

“Shh.” She slid off the table more slowly, arms half-raised, hands open. Like someone approaching a spooked horse. “It’s okay. Only my wife and I know, and we want to help you.”

“I’m not—I’m _blind!_ ”

As Matt Murdock, attorney at law, he should really have a better argument prepared for situations like this. But in his defense, he’d never really had a situation _like this_.

“Stranger things have happened,” she said gently, and he didn’t miss the way that she was subtly edging around to block the door. Which…which didn’t make any sense. If she thought he was Daredevil, she had to know he could plow right through her. “Before you say anything, it’s not Claire’s fault. She didn’t tell me. But I know her, and I know she’s gotten herself involved in some…bizarre shit. With other heroes, but mostly with the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. And then she called about you, and the whole thing was so secretive, and then I saw _you_ , and…”

“And what?” he bit out.

Her voice softened. “And you were…familiar. I was, um…I was out with some friends one night, a couple months back? I stayed behind to pay for the cab while they went ahead. When I was trying to catch up to them…someone came at me. Some guy, I don’t know.” Her voice stayed steady, but her breathing got shakier, muscles tensing with the memory. “It doesn’t matter. You stopped him.”

Matt’s continued protests and denials died on his lips.

“I watched you bring him down. I shouldn’t have, I should’ve left, but…” She gave an awkward shrug. “The way you moved, what you did, it was all so _scientific_. Beautiful. I couldn’t look away. Anyway.” Another awkward shrug. “I saw your face in the streetlight. Well. The bottom half, anyway.” Her hand came up, held out in front of her and sideways like she was obscuring the top half of his face now. “And now here you are,” she said quietly. “Familiar.”

The rush of emotions, the lingering traces of panic, dizziness from lack of sleep or lack of food or the concussion or who knew what else…it all converged on Matt like a heavy blanket. He felt wobbly; he wished he had his cane. Without it, he opted for backing up against the nearest wall, letting the vertical surface bear his weight. “I, uh…”

“You disappeared before I remembered to thank you,” Bianca murmured. “So, um…thank you. For everything you do, but also for that night.”

He twitched his head in a half-nod, unsure what else to do. Nothing either Jack or the nuns ever taught him had prepared him on how to politely handle this situation.

“Anyway.” Bianca stood up a little straighter. “I’m so sorry about the MRI. I should’ve known you’d have PTSD-like symptoms, enough to—”

“Excuse me, what?” PTSD? Was she insane?

“Uh…” Bianca seemed surprised by his surprise. “Well, you know…you go out every night stopping heinous crimes. And I’m thinking you’ve had some pretty serious injuries yourself, right? Since Daredevil sometimes disappears for a bit, but you don’t seem like the kind of guy who takes vacations…”

“I don’t have…” PTSD was for…people in the military, or first responders, or people who’d suffered abuse. It was called post- _traumatic_ stress for a reason. He’d never been through anything like that.

“Or what’s that new one people are talking about? C-PTSD? I think that’s for, um, trauma over more of an extended period of time, which…” She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m not a psychologist. I just try to be aware of this stuff, you know? So I don’t make things worse for patients. Like I did today.”

“You didn’t,” Matt said automatically. “And I don’t…I don’t have…” He waved his hand weakly. “Any of that.”

She pivoted smoothly. “I just mean, I should’ve realized that someone like you would have, you know, triggers.”

 _Triggers_ again. First Foggy, now a nurse he’d never met. (Well. Apparently he had met her.) He opened his mouth to insist that he didn’t have triggers, only to close it again. What was the point?

“Anyway.” She smoothed down her scrubs. “Clearly, an MRI isn’t a great option for you. I mean, we could try sedating you, but—”

“No,” Matt said instantly, and cringed internally at the edge of panic to his voice. “Sorry for interrupting you. I just—I can’t. Sorry.”

To his relief, Bianca nodded. “Claire said that wouldn’t work. So, barring that, we could try an EEG. It also has the advantage of predicting future seizures. We could do one here at the office, but we could also send you home with an ambulatory EEG. You’d wear the device for two to three days so it can monitor your brain’s function during your daily routine.”

Matt fiddled with the hem of his hoodie. “How long would it take to do it here?”

“Half an hour, give or take. But…” She made a sound like she was pursing her lips. “It won’t be as useful, predictively. We’ll be much more likely to predict future events if you do the test longer. You could also stay here overnight, if you want, but…”

Matt rubbed over his eyes with the back of his wrist. “No, yeah. Home is…home would be better. Thank you.”

“No problem. It might just be a bit of a wait before I can get a technician here to set you up, since this technician isn’t, um, one of Claire’s friends.”

Matt raised his eyebrows. “As in, hostile?”

Bianca’s voice became wry. “As in, less willing to circumvent hospital procedures. I’ll talk to him, though.”

“Don’t—”

“I won’t tell him who you are, I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”

Her heartbeat remained steady. Matt breathed out a slow sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Sure thing.” She cleared her throat. “I mean, after all you’ve done? It’s the least I can do.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Fortunately, she didn’t give him much of a chance.

“You can wait here, if you want. Do you want me to get your friends, bring them back?”

Tucking his hands under his thighs, he nodded. She shifted for a second, then apparently made up her mind about something; she ducked in to put a hand on his shoulder, a warning before she kissed his cheek. Matt was too shocked to do anything other than let it happen.

A second later, she was gone, flitting out the door and closing it behind her, leaving him alone. He concentrated on his lungs, finding a slow, deep rhythm, letting the muscles in his legs unclench as they hung over the table.

Letting himself, for just a few moments, truly relax.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys like our new nurse friend as much as I do!


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys, this is like 100% angst. Everyone really should be taking naps right now instead of trying to resolve complicated relational situations, but where is the fun in that?

Matt

The room was quiet. If he weren’t still taking hits from sometime in the past, he might even be able to meditate. As it was, all he got was a suddenly-throbbing nose as blood trickled down to his upper lip from…whatever, some fight. He wiped it away. At least nothing was broken.

Still, even if he couldn’t meditate, at least he could enjoy the stillness of his room. It took some effort to keep his hearing from catching on more jarring sounds throughout the hospital, but eventually his concentration became its own form of meditation. Until a new sound broke through his focus.

Footsteps.

Claire’s footsteps.

His chest tightened even as warmth spread through him. _Claire_.

She was okay, she wasn’t hurt. She was coming to find him. He’d be content to bask in those facts alone.

But.

She was worried about him; he’d know that even if he couldn’t hear it in her stiff, staccato steps. He’d know it just because that was who she was, the kind of person who cared too much for her own good.

His toes curled guiltily even as he thought it, since he doubted she’d be pleased to know he was imagining away her agency like that. But it was true, wasn’t it?

All right, so she _had_ been able to look out for herself, before, to the extent that she refused to start a relationship with him while he’d still been so unsure of his own line between good and evil, his own knowledge of when the ends stopped justifying the means. But somehow he didn’t think she’d be willing to look out for herself like that when dumping him meant dumping the guy who’d just had a seizure.

No, she’d try to tough it out for both of them, even though this was the _perfect_ opportunity for her to run. After all, this only highlighted why they could never, ever work. Why no one deserved to put up with his mess, and Claire with her healing hands least of all. Since he’d never be able to stop being Daredevil, he’d just get more and more injured, which meant he’d take advantage of her every time he asked her for help, and she’d enable him every time she put him back together enough to go out and get hurt again, and neither of their souls would be able to handle the guilt.

At the sound of fingers brushing the handle, he quickly sat up straighter, running one hand through his sweat-damp hair, wondering if there was any hope in making himself look slightly less bedraggled.

The handle turned; the door opened; Claire stepped inside. “Matt,” she murmured. She closed the door behind her, but she didn’t come any closer.

Honestly, he couldn’t say he was surprised.

Her breathing hitched. “Matt, I’m so sorry.”

What? What did she possibly have to be sorry for? He was too tired to dredge up the words to ask, so he hoped his silence was somehow inquisitive. (Dull pain spread across his forearms, like his past self had blocked the swing of a club or a bat. It didn’t matter.)

“I should’ve known this would happen. I thought about getting you a sedative, but I knew you wouldn’t take it…”

Was that a hint of defensiveness in her voice?

“And I thought about getting some other test, but those would’ve been a lot harder to get access to on such short notice. I don’t know any other nurses or technicians in charge of EEG scans or anything.”

Why was she explaining all this? He didn’t blame her.

“And I thought about warning you, but I didn’t want to…I don’t know, give you some kind of placebo effect. Make it all sound worse than it was.”

He very much doubted that anything would have sounded worse than it was. (Something throbbed in his wrist. A sprain, maybe. He was so far beyond caring.)

“I just…” Lowering her head, she covered her mouth with her hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m supposed to be the medical professional here, I’m supposed to be making things _better_ , and I just—” Her voice cracked and she instantly stopped talking.

Frowning, he glanced up in her direction. “You think this is your fault?”

She threw her hands up. “I should’ve known better! Who else was gonna put two and two together with your senses and an MRI machine? Who else was gonna make sure you got everything you needed to get through this?”

Well…Foggy could have. Possibly. More importantly, Matt should have anticipated it himself. That didn’t matter; the point was, every bad thing that happened to him wasn’t Claire’s fault, and she needed to know that. “Claire…I don’t blame you.”

“Big shock,” she muttered. “You blame yourself.”

Stung, he fell silent.

A second later, she sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…I’m just upset. It’s been a long night, and I just…” She hesitated; he heard her teeth grind together as her jaw clenched. “I guess I just wish you’d be pissed at me for once.”

He offered a sad, tired smile. “I don’t really think that’s possible.”

“Okay, but…you know that doesn’t help, right?”

“What doesn’t?”

“It doesn’t really help me to hear that you think I’m so perfect.”

“That’s not…I wasn’t saying…” Rubbing self-consciously at that spot behind his ear, he quit trying to explain himself.

She finally came closer. “I just mean, I’m trying to take care of you, and it…it just feels like even more pressure when I know you’re not gonna call me out for messing up.”

He tilted his head a little. “You said you’re supposed to, uh…make things better.”

She sighed, deeply. “Yeah, Matt. That’s literally my job.”

He wondered if it was worth bringing up, again, the fact that he hadn’t called her when he first got hit by the rain because he wanted her to be his nurse. Given all the other things he still needed to say, there was probably no point in clarifying this. But…he didn’t want her to feel like she’d failed.

Reaching out, he found her hand and allowed himself to hold it. Just for a little bit. “You’re here,” he said softly. “You’re with me. That helps more than anything.”

A second later, something slashed across his thigh, apparently at just the right angle to penetrate the red suit. Not deep, but enough to make his hand clench around hers. His fingers sprang apart as soon as he realized what he was doing.

She seemed to take that the wrong way, judging by the new tension in her body. Not that she was normally any better than he was at accepting reassurances that she’d done the right thing, or done enough. She scoffed. “You didn’t even want me in the room with you. You asked for Foggy.”

Right. But…that was different.

“Sorry,” she said a second later. “That’s not fair.”

Matt was honestly struggling to keep up with everything. “It’s okay,” he offered, which seemed safe.

“It’s not, though.” Sighing again, she pushed her hair back off her neck, pulling it around over her shoulder to twist it between her fingers. “I mean, I am _not_ a perfect person, but I don’t wanna be the kinda person who gets all angsty just because you wanted your best friend who’s known you for _years_ to be with you at a time when literally everything’s changing.”

“Everything isn’t changing,” Matt tried to reassure her.

She huffed out an unstable laugh as she sat on the exam table next to him. Not close enough to touch, though. (Matt tried not to fixate on the distance she’d left between them.) “I just mean…it’s okay, you know, if you’re…not really okay. Right now.” She hesitated, and there was a weight in the silence that he didn’t know what to do with. “Or for a while.”

He’d heard that line enough times in trauma recovery when he was a kid. He really hadn’t expected to hear it from her. It didn’t _sound_ like she was lying, but… “I’m fine, Claire.”

“C’mon, Matt.” She tilted her head at him; he imagined her eyebrows raised incredulously. “I know you better than that.”

He quirked a half-smile her direction. “Then you know I always get back up.”

“Right.” To his surprise, she sounded…suspicious, maybe? “Good. Just, try to focus on all the ways you can still help people, all right?”

He tensed. “What?”

She tensed, too. “I mean, since you’ll have to stop going out at night. Or, a least, take a break. Obviously,” she added, like it had suddenly occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t obvious.

Well.

Matt’s eyes narrowed. “I never said I was taking a break.”

Her entire body stiffened. “Seriously?”

The fact that she was so genuinely _shocked_ instantly made him feel…guilty, stupid, childish, he didn’t know. He lashed out before he could think twice. “Are you kidding me right now?” He pushed himself off the table. “You think I should just—stop being Daredevil? _You_. You _know_ what it’s like out there, you know the kinds of things I—”

“You _can’t_ be Daredevil!” she burst out.

Something deep in him went cold even as the rest of him revved up for the fight. “This city needs me, Claire—”

“Bullshit.”

“So, what, I have _one incident_ , and now you think—”

“An _incident?_ You had a _seizure!_ ” she yelled.

He stammered, searching for an argument, and came up with a measly, “…Just one.”

“Yeah, and we won’t know if you’ll have more until you get an _actual test_.”

“So let’s revisit this then,” he said through clenched teeth.

“If I thought you actually _would_ revisit this, maybe I’d agree to that,” she snapped back. “But somehow I doubt you’ll be any more open to stopping then, so let me just tell you now that I’ve been doing research. Did you know that about twenty-five percent of people who have an early post-traumatic seizure will have another seizure months or years later? And even if you _don’t_ seize again, did you know brain injuries can affect olfactory function— _which you need?_ And that’s not even getting into balance issues or cognition issues—”

Cognition issues? He pulled back. “What, you think I’m gonna go crazy?”

“I think you could _die!_ ”

“Yeah,” he said coldly. “Well, that’s nothing new.”

Her breath caught.

“That’s what you and Foggy are always saying, isn’t it? And you know what? You’re right.” He folded his arms over his chest, hunching in on himself a little because normally death didn’t scare him, but here in a hospital room it felt a bit more…imminent. “I thought you knew that when you decided to be with me.”

Her heart pounded loudly, evidence of life that he hoped would last well beyond his. “Okay,” she said in almost a whisper. “Maybe…maybe you’re right, we should talk about this later. We’re tired, and—”

“Why?” he challenged. “What’ll change later? This…” He spun his hand through the air, gesturing at himself, at the hospital room. “This isn’t some new factor, Claire. Not really. You’re always so upset that I keep getting hurt, and upset because I keep going back out before I’m entirely healed—”

“Yeah,” she cut in. “Because I _care_ about you.”

“But you shouldn’t!”

“What did you just say?”

Too much; he’d said too much, but he couldn’t take it back. After all, it was true.

When she spoke again, she sounded _wrecked_. “You really believe that?”

He dragged his hand through his hair. “What else am I supposed to believe? Every night I crawl through your window, I’m interrupting your life and making you worry, and I know you and Foggy wish I could just be safe, but what I do _isn’t_ safe, and this is just—just—the natural consequence of that, but it doesn’t change who I am, it _won’t_ , and I’m not asking you to deal with it.”

She was still frozen. Except for her racing heartbeat. “You don’t…you’re saying you don’t want me around while you…work through this?”

“What does _work through this_ even mean to you, Claire?” he demanded, although it sounded more like begging. “Because—because if it means staying off the streets, I’m sorry, but I can’t.” He swallowed hard. “I can’t.”

Her voice was small. “And if you take a hit out there? The kind you can’t get up from?”

“I’ll deal with it.”

“What if you _can’t?_ ”

“Then I can’t.”

“So I’m just supposed to—” She stopped. Breathed in shakily. “I’m just supposed to let you kill yourself.”

Not intentionally, but when had that ever mattered to her? She was too quick to blame herself for his decisions. He tried to soften his voice. “I told you, I’m not asking you to deal with it.”

She finally stood up too, mirroring him as she hugged herself. “What does that _mean_ , Matt?”

He wanted to shrug, but it would be cruel to act so casual to her face, even if it would also help him convince himself that his heart wasn’t actually breaking. He curled his hands into fists instead. Bracing himself. “It’s your choice.”

“Spell it out for me.”

She wasn’t stupid; she knew what he was saying. But she was making him say it, just like she’d done when they ended things the first time around. It was infinitely more painful this time, of course, so he couldn’t even begrudge her that. He forced the words out: “You shouldn’t be with me.”

He smelled her tears. For a long time, she didn’t say anything. Finally, she managed, “Is that what you want?”

“It’s what you want.”

She fired up, sudden fury lashing through her words. “Don’t say that. Don’t—you don’t get to say what I want. I want _you_ , Matt.”

Strangely, her anger made him feel almost calm. “No, you don’t. Not really.” It was simple; just facts. “You and Foggy, you want someone who…who comes home at five and stays in all night, not someone who goes out until three in the morning. You want someone who isn’t always taking hits. You want someone who’ll live with you until we’re in our eighties, maybe even our nineties. That’s not…that’s not me.”

Unlike last time, he couldn’t pull on a mask and storm out. He was trapped here in this room. Trapped under the weight of her silent tears and her breaking heart.

It was better this way, though. They’d been fooling themselves, pretending they could make it work.

Claire

She blinked back the tears stinging in her eyes, staring at him. His chin was raised in defiance, his fists were clenched, his shoulders thrown back, but his eyes gave him away. He was scared.

So maybe she should just…assume that everything he was saying right now was the fear speaking. But that felt like a copout. That felt like running from a reality that would just rear its ugly head in another month or two. Or, more likely, in another hour or two, when some other injury threatened his life and they started all over again.

That was what he was saying: he was set on his suicidal path, and he didn’t want her anywhere near it.

He didn’t want her at all.

Well, no. If she took his words at absolute face value, she could still believe that he wanted her; he’d just decided that _she_ didn’t want _him_. But that meant he didn’t care about what she _actually_ wanted. He’d rather make up his mind about her on his own. Which on top of being insulting and demeaning was a tiny bit heartbreaking because…didn’t he know her at _all?_

Apparently not.

She waited until she was sure her voice was steady before saying, “Okay.” Never mind what her pulse and breathing were telling him; she wasn’t going to let her voice crack in front of him.

He hesitated, eyes darting up to search her face, but before she could figure out if that was because he was hoping she didn’t mean it, he gave a quick nod. “Okay.”

Shoving her hands into her pockets, she backed up a few steps. “The, um…the technician will be in soon, I guess. I’ll leave you to it.”

And with that, she spun around. She thought she caught a glimpse of his movement in the corner of her eye, but she didn’t slow down to check. She needed to get out of that room as fast as humanly possible.

The hallway blurred through her tears. It was so _stupid_. This wasn’t her, crying over a bad breakup. And what had she even _expected_ , trying to date Matt? She knew better. She had no right to feel so blindsided when she should’ve seen this coming a mile away. Stupid.

But her emotions were lagging a bit behind her brain and she already knew that these tears wouldn’t go away easy. She took off in the opposite direction of the waiting room, making a beeline for the nearest stairwell, which she knew from experience was almost always empty.

As soon as the heavy door was shut and she was alone in the stairwell, she dropped down onto a step, curling up, unable to hold back the sobs any longer. The ugly sounds ricocheted off every harsh and unyielding surface until she was drowning in her own grief.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. Long enough for the heaving sobs to fade, replaced by a slow trickle of tears and tiny hiccups. She didn’t have any more clarity on the situation. She just felt hollow.

Suddenly, the door above her scraped open. Claire jerked upright, wiping at her face even as she twisted around, expecting to see hospital staff.

It was Maggie.

Claire slumped back down.

The nun’s light footsteps brought her down to the same step as Claire. Maggie sat with her hands clasped loosely around her knees. “Matthew said I’d find you here.”

Claire didn’t say anything, too busy biting her lip to keep the sobs from welling up again.

Maggie waited, apparently until she realized that Claire wasn’t _planning_ on saying anything. “He didn’t tell me what happened,” she said neutrally.

Claire sniffed. “He said…he said…he said he’s not gonna stop being Daredevil. Even now.”

Maggie nodded. “He won’t.”

Claire wiped at her eyes again. “How can you be so calm? This could _kill_ him.”

Maggie pressed her lips together. “It could.”

“Don’t you _care?_ We can’t just let him kill himself!”

“I can’t stop him,” Maggie murmured.

Claire stared at her. “What?”

“I can’t. And neither can you,” she added. “Or Foggy.”

“So you’re giving up?”

Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t say that. I’ll talk to him. _Repeatedly._ But at the end of the day, if he wants to go out at night, what am I supposed to do? Ground him? Take away everything he could possibly use as a mask?”

Claire hugged her knees to her chest. “He’d go out anyway.”

“Exactly,” Maggie said heavily.

Claire stared at a crack in the stairs long enough until it started getting blurry. She blinked to clear her vision. “How do you…” Elbows on her knees, she dropped her head into her hands. “How do you _love_ someone so…”

Maggie was quiet for a long time, long enough for Claire to glance at her to see her eyes raised up towards heaven. Her voice was barely audible when she breathed, “It hurts.”


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mention of suicidal thoughts.

Claire

They sat there in silence. Claire wasn’t sure what Maggie was thinking. Reliving her short time with Matt, maybe? Or reliving what it had been like to leave him?

For her part, Claire was just…tired. So, so tired.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she mumbled.

Maggie stiffened. Almost imperceptibly, but it was there. “This…may not be the best time to make that kind of decision,” she started to say. “You’ve both been under a lot of stress, and you might—”

“No, that’s not…” Setting her elbows on her knees and dropping her chin into her palm, Claire let her head tip forward, hair falling in front of her face. “I’m not talking about Matt. I just need to sleep for a week.”

“Oh. Well, I think you both want the same thing. It’s just…hard to know what that looks like, with all these…” She waved her hand, not unlike how Matt sometimes did when he was searching for the right word. “Complications.”

“Yeah, well…” Claire closed her eyes. “I’m not so sure he wants this, actually. He, um…” She hesitated, but even though she still wasn’t sure what she really thought of Maggie, one thing was undeniable: Maggie loved her son enough to want what was best for him. “He said I don’t really want him.”

“Oh.” Maggie twisted her hands together. “Well, if it helps, he didn’t say that to hurt you. He just said that because he believes it.”

That didn’t help. “Is it…” Claire squeezed her eyes shut, afraid to see Maggie’s face. “Is it true?”

There was a pause. “You’re asking me?”

“I don’t really…” Claire wiped at her nose. “I don’t really have anyone else to talk to.” She’d never even tried to explain her vigilante boyfriend (not her boyfriend anymore) to the other nurses or her friends or her mom. She’d never asked Matt if he’d ever be okay with it.

He was right. Damn him, he was right. They were like teenagers playing at being grownups. Not thinking anything through, not living in the real world.

To her credit, Maggie seemed to accept the question at face value. “None of us see each other exactly the way we are,” she began slowly, carefully, like she was measuring each word before she spoke. “None of us can truly know anyone else. I don’t believe we can even truly know ourselves. Only God can truly know us.”

Claire sniffed.

“But you can’t love what you don’t know. Which is why the best love we give each other is…powerful, but incomplete. Only God can love truly.”

“What are you saying?” Because it sounded like she was saying Claire should just leave Matt to God. And…no. Just no.

Maggie stared down into the stairwell like she was seeing something that wasn’t there. “Matthew has grown a lot since he reentered my life. But I…I think love, as he understands it, isn’t about vulnerability. It’s about…being the best version of yourself for other people. For their sake.” She tilted her head. “And, obviously, that’s partly true. Love should inspire us to become better. But…but if that’s _all_ there is, that’s not love. That’s…” She wet her lips. “Performance.”

Claire felt a pang in her chest, because yeah, that did sound like how Matt lived his life. She wondered where he’d learned that. Not from his dad, right? He didn’t talk about him much, but it was clear to Claire that Matt didn’t doubt that his father loved him as he was. Well. Matt might imagine that his dad was disappointed in him. But not to the point of undoing affection. Right?

Stick, though. His creepy mentor.

Maybe…maybe she’d even contributed? By drawing her boundaries? But he had to know that those boundaries weren’t because he was _weak_ ; they were because she didn’t know how far he’d go. She’d made that clear. Right?

Right?

“Sometimes,” Maggie said suddenly, haltingly, “I wonder how much of it is my fault. After all, if the first thing he learned about his mother was that she hadn’t wanted him…” She trailed off. “Or maybe it’s the Church. We spend so much time talking about do’s and don’t’s, and we hide God behind ritual…is it any wonder that our children don’t know how to be honest with Him? And yet we tell them that God _is_ love.”

That certainly sounded like Claire’s experience at church. “I don’t know, though. Matt’s pretty into…” She waved her hand generally. “Religion.”

Maggie snorted, somehow managing to make the noise sound prim. “Someone could spend their whole life in church and not have a better understanding of who God really is than someone who invents a deity in their own image.”

“Then how are we supposed to help him see it more clearly?” Claire demanded. “Love, I mean. Not God. Or, well…you know.”

Maggie gave Claire a half-smile, one of those expressions that Claire first recognized on her son. “What else can we do? We have to try to show him.”

They couldn’t even keep him from trying to kill himself by running around as Daredevil with _seizures_. Claire felt her heart crack a little under the weight on her chest. “You know, somehow I don’t see that working out so well.”

Maggie’s smile turned slightly sad, but her eyes took on a new determination fueled by something that looked suspiciously like hope. “Something I have to remind myself of, Claire, is that it’s not my job to bring results. My job is just to…to try.”

“No offense, but that’s not the kind of attitude you want in the operating room.” Who cared if the patient _died_ as long as the doctor _tried?_

Maggie set her hand on Claire’s knee, warm and steadying. “And yet it’s the only attitude that will keep you from blaming yourself in the times when you fail.”

 _When_ you fail. Like it was a given.

Maggie started to stand up, and paused. “To answer your question…no, I don’t think it’s true. What Matthew thinks about you. You love him, or else you wouldn’t be here. Now, what that love _looks_ like, at a practical level moving forward…that’s between the two of you.”

Claire swallowed. “Right.”

Maggie stood up the rest of the way. “For example, maybe it would be wise, for as long as this…” She stopped, looking at a loss for how to describe the alien-rain-induced catastrophe they were all trying to deal with. Claire just nodded. “As long as this lasts,” Maggie went on, “for you two to step back. From all of the intensity. Just for the time being. So you can focus on…getting through this.”

Claire stared at the step under her feet, thinking about that.

“Just a suggestion,” Maggie said, brushing her hand over Claire’s shoulder. “I’d better get back up there. Make that Foggy hasn’t gotten into trouble somehow.”

No, Maggie just wanted to give Claire space to think. And Claire appreciated it. Resting her chin on her knees, she listened to the nun’s light footsteps retreating back up the stairs. The door to the hall swung open and shut.

 _Step back_ , Maggie said. And it made sense. They had enough shit to deal with without trying to force a relationship, especially since so many of their relationship issues were still unresolved.

So, what, then? Claire was supposed to just be his nurse? Just his friend? Pretend that this was just…charity? Swallow down everything else she was feeling, maybe to the point where he wouldn’t even be able to tell?

No. Claire couldn’t do that. Maybe Maggie was the kind of person who could put relationships on hold while she prioritized other problems, but Claire couldn’t compartmentalize like that. And maybe Matt was the kind of person who could force himself to stay within prescribed boundaries, shoving aside what he really felt or what he really wanted, but to Claire, that felt like living a lie. She couldn’t do that.

Matt either wanted her, or he didn’t. He either knew how to accept her love, or he didn’t. But _she_ wasn’t going to hide from this.

She found him still in the waiting room where she’d left him, sitting on the exam table with his shoulders hunched, looking small sitting there in his hoodie and once again wearing his glasses. She was hit with sudden horror at the thought that maybe he’d somehow heard her whole conversation with Maggie, but Foggy was there, rambling on about Star Wars or something. Firmly choosing to believe that Matt had been too distracted to listen in, Claire stopped just inside the door and exchanged a nod with Maggie, who was hovering a few feet behind her son like she didn’t quite feel like she was part of the conversation.

Matt himself looked awful, somehow even worse than he had when she’d left him to go sit in a stairwell. Exhausted, and as gray as the night she’d found him in his apartment, bleeding out while his best friend panicked. Except that now, unlike then, he also looked scared. Scared and trying very hard to hide it.

“We’ll be out of here soon,” Maggie reminded him, when Foggy stopped for breath in his monologue.

“Yeah.” Matt directed the word at the ceiling. Clearly not in the mood for conversation.

Claire didn’t blame him.

Maggie, apparently, disagreed. Sitting on the edge of the table, she took Matt’s hand (and he let her). “Talk to me.”

His expression didn’t change. “There’s a family four floors down. They smuggled takeout into their dad’s hospital room.”

“Interesting,” Maggie commented. “Would you like takeout?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“Because we could smuggle it in,” she informed him.

Matt half-smiled. “I’m sure you could.”

Maggie shrugged, an answering smile flitting around her face. It looked a little forced, but the light amusement in her voice didn’t sound forced, and that was what would matter to Matt. “I suppose it doesn’t matter either way, since we’re leaving.”

Matt’s smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. “Yeah.”

“You don’t sound thrilled,” Maggie observed.

A muscle flexed in his jaw. He didn’t respond.

Claire exchanged a glance with Foggy, but neither of them moved to interrupt the Murdocks.

Maggie softened her voice, and one of her hands came up to touch Matt’s cheek. “This is a big change, Matthew, but it’s not some kind of divine punishment. Tell me you believe that.”

He closed his eyes. “Does it matter?”

“Does it?” Maggie countered.

Knowing Matt, of course it mattered.

“It’s not a punishment any more than losing your eyesight was a punishment,” Maggie insisted. “It’s just…something you have to adapt to. The way you adapted then.”

Matt’s blank eyes snapped open. “Getting my abilities was a _gift_.”

His mother was undaunted. “There’s a gift in this, too. We just have to find it.”

Matt rolled his eyes as his lids fell closed again.

There it was: the Murdock stubbornness colliding from two directions. It would be fascinating to watch if Claire’s heart weren’t involved.

Foggy took a half-step forward. “Maybe we don’t need to figure this all out right now?” he interjected tentatively. “Let’s talk about, um…what we wanna do when we all get back to Matt’s place. Unless we wanna crash somewhere else instead? I promise my apartment has better food.”

“Not a bad idea,” Claire remarked. “Change of scene might be nice.”

Matt didn’t say anything to that, but his hand clenched at his side.

“Or not,” Claire said. Really, the last thing he wanted was probably more change.

He raised his eyebrows at that, but didn’t otherwise respond.

Before anyone could settle the issue, someone rapped on the doorframe. Claire turned to see Bianca there, holding a clipboard and a small bottle of pills. “Can I intrude?”

Matt was the patient, so Claire, Foggy, and Maggie all looked at him, who must’ve somehow sensed their stares because he cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “Sure.”

“I found a medication for you,” Bianca announced. “Keppra. Often used for partial onset seizures.”

“Partial?” Matt looked hopeful.

“It means the abnormal electrical activity is currently only in one part of your brain,” she explained with a small smile. “They’re still serious, but they don’t tend to be as…dramatic. My guess is that you’ve had them before and not even noticed.”

Matt’s hopeful look faded.

“But this should help,” she insisted, handing him a bottle of pills. “Take these at the same time once a day, and we’ll see how it goes. You might be able to start tapering off in about two weeks. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” he said, obviously a lie, tapping his fingers restlessly against the bottle.

“You should be aware of possible side effects. The most common are sleepiness or fatigue, worsening of balance, lightheadedness or dizziness, trembling, double vision—” Foggy snorted at that, and Matt’s lips twitched; “—and confusion and irritability.” Bianca paused. “Less common side effects are increases in risk-taking behavior—”

Great, that was _exactly_ what he needed.

“—and depression. And…thoughts of suicide.” Bianca paused again. “Have you struggled with depression or had thoughts of suicide before?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Claire saw Maggie open her mouth, only to close it again a second later and shuffle her feet, staring at the floor.

“No,” Matt said clearly. Then he ducked his head a little. “Well, uh…depression, yes. Probably.”

_Probably._

He lifted his chin. “But nothing suicidal,” he finished smoothly.

Claire narrowed her eyes.

Bianca, however, smiled at him. “That’s good to hear. Your friends and family, or whoever’s around, will want to watch for any change of mood.” She glanced around the room at Foggy, Maggie, and Claire. “I assume you’re the friends and family?”

“That’s us,” Foggy said, a mix of pride and determination in his voice that made Matt’s brow furrow.

“Then it’ll be on you to keep an eye on him.”

“That, we can do,” Foggy assured her.

Matt looked less than happy about the situation. He never enjoyed being under scrutiny, but, then, she didn’t think _anyone_ would be happy about this level of scrutiny.

Bianca held up a card. “I wrote my number here, in case you ever need, um…direct contact with me.”

“You mean, in case we ever need to skip regular procedure?” Claire asked dryly, leaning against the wall.

Bianca shot her a dirty look as she handed the card to Foggy. “You’re welcome.”

Claire rolled her eyes, but let the weight of her sincerity hang from her words as she said, “Thanks, Bianca. Seriously.”

Bianca turned back towards Matt. “No. Thank you.”

His answering smile was forced.

Matt

He swallowed the first pill at ten twenty-two a.m., sitting in the back of the uber Foggy called to take them home. To _his_ place, which was a tiny relief. Home.

He flicked his tongue against his teeth, trying to get rid of the taste of the pill. He felt like he’d swallowed a suicide pill. No point in complaining about it, though. Everyone in this car was already agreed that he needed these meds. And he didn’t particularly want to draw attention to it, anyway.

(He tried not to be aware of Claire, but the tension in her body was like a flare in his mind. They hadn’t talked since she’d left his room. He knew she’d been crying, and he knew Maggie had talked to her, but he’d tried not to listen. She deserved privacy. Of course, not knowing what Claire said left his mind free to imagine the worst possible scenarios, but…he’d effectively told her to get out of his life. Nothing she said could be worse than that.)

(She had a box in her lap. The ambulatory EEG he’d have to use. He was trying not to think about that, either.)

Pain lit up across his forearms. No broken skin, at least; felt more like he’d blocked a bat or a pipe. Really, the injuries from his past weren’t so bad now. He’d gotten used to being knocked around by nonexistent hits now, and besides: in his past, he’d beaten Fisk, he now had armor, he had Foggy back…life was good, back then. The actual hits weren’t bad and the memories that came with were, for once, not bad.

Reality was worse.

When they reached his apartment, he tried to trail behind the others, but Foggy dropped back to walk next to him. He didn’t try to force a conversation, at least. Just offered silent support, and didn’t even say anything about the way Matt’s feet dragged. It was sweet, but it felt…too…heavy.

An uncomfortable silence hung over all of them even when they reached Matt’s apartment. He tried to break it. “Anyone, uh…anyone want some food?”

“Yes!” Foggy said immediately, which wasn’t exactly out of character for him, but Matt couldn’t banish the suspicion that Foggy was just desperate to break up the atmosphere.

Matt cracked a smile as he moved into the kitchen.

Claire took a deep breath, gearing up for something. “I’ll help,” she offered.

“It’s fine, I got it,” he said hastily without turning his head.

She followed him anyway, heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s, and stopped to hover at the mouth of the kitchen.

Okay. So they were doing this, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sings* Matt is a d i s a s t e r


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for Matt thinking some very dark things that are not at all true of what it means to live with epilepsy.

Matt

There was a beat, during which Foggy and Maggie apparently took notice of Claire’s hesitant positioning and the rising tension. Then the two of them struck up a hurried conversation as they retreated to the living room: Maggie asking Foggy questions about the law, Foggy giving the most longwinded explanation possible for the exclusionary rule in criminal defense. Matt was almost a little bit touched.

Claire took a step closer, wetting her lips. “Matt, listen…what you said at the hospital…”

He opened the fridge, determined to maintain his cover of getting food. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“Maybe I _want_ to say something, then,” she replied sharply. “Maybe you don’t get to tell me what I want or what I should say.”

Yeah, he’d…crossed a line, back at the hospital. Clearly. But he wasn’t going to apologize for it or take it back. In the long run, it was easier for both of them to have the truth out in the open. It wasn’t fair to make her feel like she had to come up with a way to drop him without hurting him, and he didn’t think he could stand it if she tried.

He opened the fridge door, pretending to focus on evaluating his scant supplies.

Claire took two steps closer, lowering her voice. “You’re wrong. I do want this. _You_ , I want _you_. And…” She paused, gathering either her thoughts or her patience. “Maybe this isn’t a great time for you to think about me like that, and I get that. I won’t force you into anything. But you don’t get to decide how I think about you. So…you’re just gonna have to deal with that.” She punctuated her statement with an upward jerk of her chin.

For all that her words rang with a tone of _that’s final_ , he wasn’t actually totally sure what she meant. Maybe it was the concussion, or maybe she wasn’t being very direct.

“Look, Matt…” Her hand came up too slowly close the door of the fridge. “I know…I know everything happening right now is new and scary for you. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to not know what’s going to happen.”

“Forget about me,” he said roughly, the words coming out harsher than he’d meant but it was too late to try to change that. “What about _you?_ ”

She stayed calm. “I told you what I want.”

His cut-off exhale was half scoff, half bitter laugh.

Her answering scoff was louder. “Don’t believe me? Can’t you hear my heartbeat?”

She stepped closer; he stepped back until he was pressed against the counter. “Claire, could you just—” He couldn’t handle this. Here she was, pushing into his space, refusing to let him push her away, when at any moment he might break.

A voice in the back of his head pointed out that she’d seen him broken plenty of times tonight already. Broken, and undignified, and in tears. And she hadn’t left. But that was different. As bad as everything had been, he’d been able to focus on just…just getting through it. Just gritting his teeth and keeping it together because this wouldn’t last more than another day or two at most, right?

But now? When he’d have to wait two weeks before he even knew if the medication _worked?_

So much better if she just pulled away now.

But this was Claire. If she walked away, it would be on her own terms. He was terrified of reaching that moment, but he knew by now that he wouldn’t be able to push her away before that point.

She trailed her hand down his arm, found his hand, and twined their fingers together. “Would you just be honest with me?” she whispered. “About what you’re so worried about?”

 _Everything_ would be the honest answer, but that wasn’t what she was looking for. “I just—I don’t—” He wet his lips. “If these—if these seizures keep happening…” He didn’t know how to explain it, couldn’t find the words that would capture everything he was afraid of. (And he _was_ afraid; he could admit that much, if only to himself.) “I don’t want you to see me like that,” he managed at last. He closed his eyes, which did nothing to muffle the rapid drumbeat of her heart. “You deserve better.”

All she did was squeeze his hand, then snake both arms around his waist so she could rest her head against his chest.

His arms came up to hold her despite himself, despite how much harder it would be now to let her go. “Claire—”

Her breathing hitched; her heartrate was speeding up (he could feel it everywhere they were pressed together). Not because she was about to lie, but because she was nervous about whatever she was about to say. “Matt? You don’t…you don’t have to be perfect. Not with me. You know that, right?”

He _couldn’t_ _be perfect_ , so it didn’t matter. All he could do was his best, and that was never good enough. It was only a matter of time before Claire figured that out (again). His lips twisted ruefully. Maybe this was a good thing, this whole night, if it made her realize she didn’t want such a broken person in her life. Better not to drag it out, which would just hurt both of them more. Honestly, he was kind of shocked it hadn’t happened already. But maybe there’d been enough high points sprinkled in? Like the reminder of how he’d saved her from the Russians (never mind that he was to blame for her needing to be saved in the first place) and taking down Fisk.

But this? The life stretching ahead of him now weighed down by…by _epilepsy?_

If nothing else had been enough to make her recoil, this would definitely send her running.

“I take it you don’t believe me,” she whispered.

“What makes you say that?” he asked roughly.

“You’re trembling.”

He flexed his arms, realizing she was right, about to let go.

She moved in closer. “No—don’t let go.” Her voice was firm. “Matt, listen.” Her head tilted back; she was staring up at him and he hated to think what she might be reading on his face. “Can I be frank?”

“When aren’t you,” he muttered.

She ignored this. “ _Anyone_ would want to kiss Daredevil.”

He blinked, taken aback and utterly confused by where she might be going with this. “…Okay?”

“I’m just saying. The courage, the determination, the whole hero thing…” There was a hint of amusement of her voice as she suddenly ran her hand up his stomach and chest. “This body? Which all your suits nicely accentuate? I’m just saying. It doesn’t mean much for someone to wanna tap that.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Tap that,” he echoed weakly.

She plowed stubbornly on even though her cheeks were flushed and her heart was beating a mile a minute. “But the man underneath? The one who nerds out about the law and gets all withdrawn when he loses a case, not because his ego’s taken a hit but because he’s worried about his clients, and who sometimes gets too beat up and has to let someone else stitch his wounds, and I guess…” She took a quick inhale. “Someone who might, maybe, have to live a slightly different life until these seizures go away, and who might be a little extra vulnerable until then…” She paused.

He forced his voice to sound casual. “Not so attractive, huh?”

“That’s _not_ what I’m saying,” she said fiercely. She shuffled her weight a little, shifting in his arms. “Although. I see how, with that leadup, it could sound like that. But what I’m saying is just that…that what I feel for you, _all_ of you and not just the Daredevil part, it…it goes deeper. All right? It’s not just, like…lust. Maybe lust could handle the seizures and everything too, but I don’t know, I just know that what I feel is so much more than that. And I…” Another quick, desperate inhale. “I may not know a lot about love, but I know that part of loving someone is loving them even when they’re vulnerable, and I don’t care if people have tried to make you think differently, it’s not _true_ , it’s not—”

“Claire,” he broke in wonderingly. They’d…neither of them had been brave enough to use that word yet, to name what they felt for each other. For a second, he was caught up in shame that she’d gotten the courage first, and that she’d had to say it for his sake instead of just because she wanted to.

“I mean it,” she insisted, voice hardening like she was determined to cut through all his anxious thoughts. “I love you. And whatever’s going on up here…” She carded her hands through his hair. “It doesn’t change that.”

His eyes closed automatically at the sensation, and he was so distracted by her words, by trying to make sense of them, that he didn’t notice what she was doing or what she wanted until her hands dropped down to his neck, angling his head down; she rose up on her toes, and the next thing he knew, her lips were on his.

It didn’t make sense. She should be pulling away. Or pitying him. Or, at the barest minimum, sucking it up and healing him (because she was a nurse and a good person and he was a disaster) while putting feelings on the backburner. She should not be moving in _closer_. She should be tolerating him, if not rejecting him outright. She should not be accepting him. She should not desire him.

But the facts were difficult to deny.

He responded automatically, because all her beauty and goodness were irresistible beyond the best of his defenses. He might hate himself later for giving in so easily, but for now his hands settled on her hips, drawing her just a little closer, holding her there in defiance of the moment when he would inevitably let go.

Claire

They stayed like that for a while, giving up all pretense of getting food ready. The fact that he wasn’t pushing away or even just standing there stiffly, but was actually holding her back, made her feel like both feet were on level ground again.

Not that she was naïve enough to think that a few words from her would be enough to untangle whatever it was in him that made him so convinced that his presence was a toxin. But even though _she_ was still silently freaked out about their future, she realized that _he_ had more than enough to deal with coming in the next few hours. So, despite whatever it was in her that made her so desperate to find lasting, permanent solutions to everything (to broken bones, to vigilantes, to relationships), she mentally dragged the metaphorical goalpost a little closer and told herself to stop worrying about next month or next week or even tomorrow. Today really did have enough trouble of its own.

What struck her most was that Matt was not the first to let go. She was the one who finally pulled back, and that was only because he suddenly jerked in response to something and she didn’t want him to knock his head on his cabinets.

“C’mon,” she said, towing him out to the open space in the center of his apartment. (Foggy looked more than a little relieved to give up lecturing Maggie about obscure legal rules.) She wished he had carpet in case he fell, since she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep him on the couch. Maybe he had a spare mattress? Even blankets would be better than hardwood. It was hard to imagine how his apartment could be _worse_ for someone with epilepsy.

He didn’t seem too concerned, though. He stood taller than he had since the first seizure, and she didn’t want to be arrogant enough to claim all the credit for that, but she was also desperate enough to have finally done something right to steal just a _little_ credit.

He let out a hiss, then waved his hand like he could sense everyone about to ask if he was okay. “Just my knuckles.” He flipped his hand around to prove it, flexing his fingers.

“You busted your knuckles open through your suit?” Foggy sounded either skeptical or impressed. Hard to tell.

Matt shrugged. “Must’ve been hitting something pretty hard.”

Foggy snorted. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

Matt threw him a—well, some kind of _look_ making it clear that he did not find that kind of joke terribly funny. But the look was interrupted when he flinched from another hit. He took a step back to regain his balance.

Claire narrowed her eyes. Since the fight with Fisk, most of his past fights had been over pretty quick. The everyday criminals he was going up against couldn’t handle more than a few hits, and could barely do much damage in return. This fight was starting to look a bit more substantial.

Apparently, Foggy agreed. “What’s happening?”

“Honestly?” Matt let out an _oof_ , absorbing a phantom hit to his gut. “I don’t even know anymore.”

Whoever he was fighting, they were definitely doing a better job of it than your average criminal. Claire felt trepidation settle like a knot in her throat and a rock in her stomach.

“I guess it’s just, you know, a bad night.” Matt coughed into his arm; the sleeve came away bloody.

That got Claire moving. Not rushing to his side (she was trying not to overwhelm him), but on her feet, at least. “Are you bleeding internally?”

He made a face. “Just bit my tongue, no worries.”

“This is what I was saying about mouth guards,” she muttered.

Matt rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. Like he was not only used to this but _enjoying_ himself now. Boy needed a therapist asap. “About the mouth guard,” he began pretentiously, “allow me to reiterate.”

Before he got the chance, his head snapped back, he stumbled three steps backwards, and then he crumpled to the floor with a dull _thud_.

“Matt!” It was Claire and Foggy and Maggie all yelling at once, all dropping to their knees beside him. He was out, completely, no response, and blood was trickling down the side of his face from his head.

Claire’s stomach dropped. He looked _dead_.

“Frank Castle,” Foggy breathed.

“What?” Claire demanded. “The Punisher?”

Foggy was staring wide-eyed at his best friend. “They were fighting. We had a client, there was an ambush, it was the DA, Reyes, she wanted—”

“Skip to the _point_ ,” Claire growled.

“Castle shot him!”

Claire instantly started running her hands over Matt’s sides, searching for entry and exit wounds.

Foggy interrupted: “No, no, on the head.”

“ _What?_ ” she shrieked.

“Helmet,” Foggy clarified quickly, and pointed at the trickle of blood. “It’s okay—I mean, it’s _not_ , but he’ll wake up in a few minutes.” Foggy didn’t look nearly as confident as he sounded. “I think.”

Claire sat back on her heels, trying not to panic. But he’d already gotten concussed from that stupid taser, and then taken even more damage from getting pummeled by Fisk. Who knew what this extra head trauma would do on top of that?

She regretted asking the question, even in her own head, because he started shaking. No, not shaking. Convulsing.

Shit. “Time it!” she snapped at Maggie while she scanned him and the floor around him. He wasn’t choking and there wasn’t anything nearby for him to hurt himself with. She grabbed a pillow to put under his head, but other than that, there was nothing to do but stay with him.

She wasn’t used to this. His injuries normally required action. Just sitting here watching him suffer…she was not used to this.

“This happened last time,” Foggy whispered. “I think.”

She stared at him. “Wait, what?”

“I found him after he was shot. When I tried to get him home, he started…” Foggy gestured weakly. “Doing that.”

“And you didn’t _tell me?_ ” Claire screeched.

Foggy shrunk away from her. “I didn’t know! I was just focused on getting him home, and then we got in a stupid fight. I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking.”

“Understatement,” she spat. She wasn’t totally sure that knowing ahead of time would’ve made that much of a difference, but her anger needed an outlet.

Yet Foggy just sat there, radiating guilt. Yelling at him was as unsatisfying as yelling at Matt.

Matt, whose convulsions slowed to a stop. There was no other change in his state.

“Time?” Claire demanded.

“One minutes, twelve seconds,” Maggie reported.

Claire’s heart still raced, trying to deal with the implications. Now she knew she’d been right about him having seizures before, which made it seem all too unlikely that they’d stop any time soon. The only hope came from the fact that he hadn’t been on medication before. Still, with the amount of head trauma he’d sustained…she bit her lip.

At that moment, he started to stir, letting out a low moan.

“Shh, shh.” Claire cupped his face in her hands. “Stay still.”

“…Claire?” His voice was weak, slurred. “What…what hap…”

“You got shot.” She studied his face. “Frank Castle. The Punisher. Do you remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbled. “It just…” He closed his eyes tightly. “I don’t remember it hurting this bad.”

Her stomach dropped again. Was this injury worse? Exacerbated by his existing concussion? Or was he just feeling it more because he was wearing out?

“M’fine,” he mumbled, and waved his hand vaguely in her direction. “Your heart…”

She couldn’t help that her heart was telling him she was panicked.

“Nghh,” he grunted, starting to sit up.

She put her hand on his shoulders, both steadying him and trying to slow him down before he hurt himself. “Hey, easy, easy. There’s nowhere you gotta be right now.”

He ignored her, face screwed up like he was concentrating, and got to his feet, drawing himself up to his full height. All Claire could think about was how much farther he’d have to fall now the next time something happened.

“Couch?” Foggy asked brightly, like that had been Matt’s plan all along. “Great idea, let’s—”

“ _Shh!_ ” Matt hissed through his teeth, both hands darting up towards his ears before he stopped himself and just stood there, frozen, eyes darting around.

Claire waited tensely, but when he didn’t say or do anything else, she dropped her voice to a near-inaudible whisper. “Matt?”

And he didn’t react at all, not with so much as a twitch.

She bit her lip.

Then his head snapped around, towards the window, face crumpled in a wince as he slammed his hands against his ears.

Claire flapped her hand at Maggie and Foggy in warning. They scuttled backwards, moving quietly, and Matt's head swiveled like he couldn't track their movement.

Okay. If something was wrong with his hearing, that was bad. She wasn’t an ENT, ears weren’t exactly her area of expertise.

He reached one of his hands towards her, _groping_ , like he couldn’t tell where she was. With no idea what else to do, Claire extended her hand to meet his.

At their touch, he flinched again and jerked away. “Claire?” he asked, voice tight.

What was _happening?_ “Matt,” she answered, fighting to keep her voice even.

He didn’t react to the sound of his name. Not at all. And through everything that had already happened, she hadn’t felt the cold grip of sheer panic like she did right now.

“Claire,” Matt said again, eyes wide with fear.

“ _Tell me what’s happening_ ,” she hissed. “Matt, c’mon, just—just _talk_ to me.”

“Foggy?” He raised his voice. He wet his lips as his eyes darted around the room. “Mom?”

Claire turned desperately to Foggy. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with him?”

But Foggy looked clueless, helpless.

Claire didn’t even bother looking towards Maggie; she hadn’t been around yet, she’d have no idea what was happening right now. Claire took a step closer to her patient. “Matt, can you hear me?”

Nothing, just his desperate, sightless eyes flitting around the room, passing over her face like she wasn’t even there.

She put her fingers right next to his ear and snapped.

He didn’t even twitch.

“After Midland Circle,” Maggie breathed, “he lost hearing in one ear…”

That didn’t make sense. They weren’t that far yet.

But lost hearing, that could be it. Matt seemed on the verge of hyperventilating. “C-Claire?” Panic laced through his too-loud voice; he looked two seconds from bolting.

Couldn’t have that. Claire took a risk and put both her hands on his face.

And Matt _moved_. He surged towards her, snapping out his fist. White flashed in her vision and she fell backwards, landing hard on the floor with her jaw throbbing and blood pooling in her mouth from where she’d bit her tongue.

By the time her vision cleared, she saw Matt still standing on guard, every muscle tense. No apologies tumbling from his lips and no guilt in his eyes. Only terror.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii, it's been a while. See, about 99% of the time, writing stuff out of order works really well at enabling me to write really fast. But every once in a while, I write a scene that I love, but it's in the distance, and by the time I've worked up to it, it no longer fits, and then I have to figure out how much of the original scene to sacrifice. So, yeah, that happened here. Very much a "kill your darlings" situation. Well, I'm pretty sure I found a spot for that scene further on, so the darlings aren't quite killed. Anyway, that's my excuse for the delay.
> 
> In other news, these two are disasters, so please don't necessarily see this as a model of Right Way To Do Relationships.

Foggy

The hell was this. Maggie pulled Claire a safe distance away, and Claire _let_ her, let herself be moved away from her patient with a stunned look in her wide eyes. And Matt? No indication whatsoever that he realized what he’d done.

“Buddy,” Foggy said softly. Not that he thought Matt could hear. Just that when Foggy was upset, he talked. “Buddy, no one’s trying to hurt you. You’re in your apartment.”

No response.

Yeah, Foggy was running hard with the lost hearing theory, which made a rock of literal ice form in his gut. He took a step closer towards his best friend.

“Foggy,” Maggie hissed.

Well, it was sweet of her not wanting him to get clocked in the face either, but Foggy vividly remembered trying to wake Matt up from nightmares a few times in college, and he definitely caught a fist to the face a few times back then, and, well, Foggy lived through it.

“Just me,” he said, keeping his voice pitched low and even, like he was trying to cajole a spooked horse. “Lemme see if I can help you, okay?”

Matt took a step back.

What, he’d sensed him?

No, Matt was just backing up anyway, one hand outstretched behind him, the other hovering close to his chin in something almost like a boxer’s guard. Matt’s fingers missed his table, though, and he backed straight into it.

Matt made a sharp noise, both fear and anger mixed in, and whipped around at the same time as he jumped back. Foggy had to sidestep out of his way. Matt ended up in a fighting stance, chest heaving, sightless eyes darting in every possible direction.

Okay. New priority: get Matt to sit down before he hurt himself or broke his furniture. Foggy started edging closer again, ignoring Claire and Maggie’s whispers asking what he thought he was doing. Why were they whispering? Matt couldn’t hear them anyway.

When Foggy was about two feet away from Matt, he made the mistake of glancing at Claire. A brilliant bruise was already blooming across her cheek. Swallowing hard, Foggy glanced back at Matt.

It was just Matt. Just his best friend. His best friend who trained specifically to fight people, and then used those skills to actually fight people, and whose instinct when he didn’t know what was going on was, apparently, to fight anyone who came close. Even though he had to _know_ , logically, that he was still in his own apartment.

Foggy was gaining a newfound appreciation for just how deeply ingrained Daredevil was.

Before he could psyche himself out, Foggy took a deep breath and touched Matt’s shoulder.

Matt grabbed Foggy’s hand. For a split second, Foggy thought Matt was about to break his fingers. Instead, Matt jerked Foggy close and sent his other hand smashing against Foggy’s face, which, _ow_. Not a punch, but there was still enough force to make Foggy bite his tongue, tasting blood and seeing stars.

Then Matt’s fingers spanned across Foggy’s face.

And Matt _fell apart._

He jerked his hand away with a strangled noise, but his other hand oxymoronically tightened its grip on Foggy’s like he was scared Foggy was gonna try to get away.

“Fogs?” he breathed, voice cracking in the middle of the single syllable.

Foggy carefully did not move. “Hey, man. It’s me. Wanna tell us what—”

Matt started speaking over him. “I’m okay,” he was saying, even though he looked very much _not_ okay with his eyes filled with fear, and his voice was tight and tremulous. “I’m okay. This happened before.”

What.

_What._

“I think…it’s from getting shot.” His eyes darted around.

Freaking _duh_. “Dude,” Foggy started to say, “just tell us what—”

“I don’t really know how long it lasted last time,” Matt went on, voice getting a bit higher pitched as he remembered. “Um. But. I was fine then, so…so I should be fine now. It’ll stop.”

This proclamation was met with dead silence.

Then Claire started yelling at him.

Foggy didn’t know what she was saying, really. It sounded like Spanish. Really, really angry Spanish. He thought he caught a few phrases that Matt sometimes muttered under his breath and figured he was probably better off not knowing what they meant.

Maggie tried to intervene. “Claire, Claire, he said he’s okay—”

Claire whirled around. “He _lost_ his _hearing!_ ”

“Not permanently,” Maggie insisted, obviously trying very hard to sound reasonable despite the utter lunacy of the entire situation on like a hundred different levels.

“He _didn’t tell me!_ ”

Maggie apparently didn’t have anything to say to that. She just gestured weakly in Matt’s direction. “Well, you know what he’s like…”

“ _Not_ helping,” Claire hissed, and then pointed at Foggy. “And you! You knew?”

“I knew nothing,” Foggy protested.

“You knew he was gonna get shot!”

“…Except that.”

“And you didn’t tell me either! How am I supposed to help him if I keep getting blindsided like this? What am I here for? To _spectate?_ ”

Foggy was starting to feel a tiny bit jealous that Matt was deaf right now.

Speaking of Matt. The manifestation of all their problems started moving ever so slightly in the general direction of his couch, his free hand stretched out in front of him. “I think,” he said, voice soft under Claire’s continued diatribe, “I’m going to sit down.”

“I’ll help,” Foggy told him, like an idiot, and put his other hand on Matt’s shoulder. Matt flinched away but didn’t let go of the hand he was already holding, so Foggy just awkwardly trailed along after his friend, feeling not unlike a dog on a leash. He tried to nudge Matt to the right when Matt was about to run into the couch, but Matt just flinched again, straight _into_ the couch, and Foggy gave up on offering any guidance whatsoever.

He and Matt ended up settled on the couch right about the time that Claire finally stopped yelling, and that because Maggie was whispering about neighbors. Foggy could only assume everyone else in the world was freaking out too much over however the alien rain affected them to care about whatever was going on in apartment 6A.

As for Matt, he was doing that infuriating thing where he acted like no one could tell he was panicking. His chest rose and fell sharply, he clutched at Foggy and at the couch, and his head kept twitching like if he could just tilt it at the right angle, he’d be able to hear again. But despite all that, he had this awful, forced smile on his face. Foggy wanted to wipe it away.

Foggy wasn’t sure how long they sat there. He could feel Maggie’s worry and Claire’s now-silent fuming, but he kept all his attention on his friend, looking for the slightest sign of improvement.

“Shh-shh,” Matt suddenly whispered.

And everyone froze.

Slowly, eyes wide, Matt raised one hand to his ear and snapped. The relief washing over his expression was palpable.

“Buddy?” Foggy asked, pitching his voice at _exactly_ a normal volume.

Matt turned his face towards him. “Fogs.”

Foggy’s heart flipped in his chest. “You hear me?”

Matt cocked his head, brow furrowed. “I think…yeah.” His eyes moved around the room. “Claire?”

She didn’t answer.

Foggy quickly glanced around. Claire was still standing by the kitchen, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“Claire?” Matt both looked and sounded slightly panicked. Again.

Foggy jumped in again. “She’s right here, buddy. She’s, uh…” He trailed off, not wanting to speak for Claire but not knowing what else to say.

Claire

It was really hard to be mad at someone sitting there looking like such a kicked puppy. But Claire’s adrenaline had been slowly building since Matt dropped to the ground with a _head wound from the Punisher_ , and she had no outlet whatsoever, and it all felt so stupidly _pointless_ because Matt was just sitting there totally _fine_. Letting her freak out for no reason. At least, she thought it was for no reason, but who really knew with Matt Murdock? He could have internal bleeding, and would he even _tell_ her?

“Claire?” Matt’s head swiveled like he was trying to pin down her location.

Keeping her arms crossed, Claire took a few steps closer and around the couch. “Here,” she said shortly.

And the _look_ on his face at hearing her voice almost erased all her anger. Almost.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. She wasn’t about to say this twice. He was nodding before she finished the sentence, so she went on: “You’re going to the hospital.”

Matt tensed. “What? No, I’m fine. Like I said—I don’t know if you heard me, but—this happened before, and it was f—”

Claire ticked them off on her fingers. “You got _shot_ , you had a _seizure_ , and then you _lost your hearing_.”

Matt curled in on himself a little. “But…but I’m fine.”

She couldn’t take it. All of a sudden, she was shouting again. “You knew you were gonna lose your hearing and you _didn’t tell me!_ ”

He rested his forehead against the heel of his hand, looking so, so tired. “Didn’t I?”

“No, Matt, you did not!”

“Sorry, I thought…I thought I told you.”

She paused her anger for a split second and tried to remember his brief explanation from so many hours ago and let out a furious hiss. “You told me you got shot and knocked offline, but I thought that just meant _unconscious_ , not—” She broke off. What was even the point? “Matt, we were _literally at the hospital_ an hour ago. You let us leave even though you _knew_ you were about to _get shot_ and lose your hearing!”

Matt just shrugged uncomfortably.

Yeah. Because he was _fine_ , right?

Her fury came back twice as strong. “Look, I _know_ you’re an idiot, but _this?_ This is a whole new level, Matt. How someone as smart as you could be so _stupid_ —”

“Claire,” Maggie said quietly, warningly.

“No! I deserve the right to yell at him, damnit!” _She_ was the one with medical expertise he insisted on willfully _ignoring_ while throwing himself into dangerous situations and refusing to get help until it was almost too late, and making her feel dumb and dramatic for worrying even though she _knew_ he was being reckless, and she couldn’t even have the satisfaction of yelling at him about it because he just sat there, shrinking in on himself, looking for all the world like he sincerely believed every furious word she threw at him—

She looked at him, really looked at him, and the anger drained. The throbbing in her jaw where he’d hit her returned with a vengeance. An injury he apparently had yet to realize he’d given her.

She backed up towards the hallway. “I have to go.”

Maggie moved to block her. “Claire, wait—”

“I need some air,” Claire bit out, and darted past the nun and out the door.

She didn’t know what her plan was as she burst out onto the sidewalk outside Matt’s apartment. She’d have to go back in at some point. And soon, since she needed to figure out what the hell just happened and if there were any lasting dangers. But she couldn’t handle that right now. Being a nurse, being professional, pretending there wasn’t so much heartache involved…she couldn’t do it.

Claire paced back and forth while cars raced past. It just didn’t make _sense_. As much as Claire hated to see Matt cowed, at least the seizures seemed to finally get him to slow down. Be _rational_ for once. At least, that was what Claire had thought, but that hope got blasted out of the water with this whole shot-in-the-head-and-lost-my-hearing-and-couldn’t-be-bothered-to-tell-anyone thing.

Like—was she a joke to him?

She should take deep breaths. Calm down. She was angry, and she’d learned that the time when she was angry were the times when it was most important to second-guess what she was thinking and feeling. Second-guess the assumptions she was making before she turned the other person into a monster in her own head. Matt was… _difficult_ , yeah, but he wasn’t actually stupid and he wasn’t a monster.

He had very different priorities, that was all. As far as she could tell, they had exactly two priorities shared between them: their commitment to the people of Hell’s Kitchen, and their commitment to each other.

Well, she kept hoping Matt was as committed to her as she was to him, but it was hard to tell sometimes, and especially when he—

“Claire,” a quiet voice said.

She turned around. Matt stood there in a hoodie, sweats, and thick socks. No shoes, of course. That would be sensible. No glasses, either. How he managed to move so silently that she hadn’t even realized he was there was beyond her.

He took a step closer, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “I’m really sorry. About not telling you about…” He gestured at his own head.

She hugged herself a little tighter. “It’s fine. You brought it up, you just weren’t as clear as you should’ve been.”

“I know, and I’m—”

“ _Don’t_ apologize again.”

He wet his lips, looking strangely nervous. Young, even. “Are you…are you coming back inside?”

He was the one always pushing at her to leave, and now here he was, too anxious to outright ask her to come back. It was infuriating and heartbreaking at the same time. But mostly heartbreaking. “Yeah,” she said.

He gave a tiny, tight nod. Waited a second. Then, tentatively: “When?”

She flashed back to standing in his apartment after he’d called because he ripped his stitches trying to _see how much he could move_. How upset he’d clearly been to learn she was leaving the city. And yet the man who fought organized crime and flipped off roofs hadn’t been brave enough to tell her he wanted her to stay, and the man who made a living convincing people of things hadn’t even tried to make a case why she should reconsider the boundaries she was drawing between them. Part of her appreciated how he respected her decision, but part of her couldn’t help thinking this would all be _so much easier_ if Matt just _told_ her what he wanted instead of contenting himself with whatever scraps of herself she offered. Instead of making her do all the work to navigate their relationship. Exhausting.

His forehead creased. “Claire?”

“Sorry, I’m just…” She dragged her hand down her face. “Thinking.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but he didn’t leave, either. He simply stood there with his head lowered.

Exhausting.

Well, she was a nurse and he regularly operated on about four hours of sleep. Since when did they let something like exhaustion stop them? Standing up straighter, she set her shoulders back. “Well,” she said with forced optimism, “Should we go back in?”

He didn’t move. “You’re upset.”

“I…yeah,” she admitted reluctantly.

“With me.”

“No, with…” She waved her hand. “Everything.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Matt, come on. I’m not gonna pick a fight with you with…all this going on.” Unlike how he tried to shove her away back at the hospital, but she was trying very hard not to hold that against him right now.

He raised both eyebrows. “You didn’t have a problem yelling at me a few minutes ago.”

Okay, so, she wanted to challenge him to live through the last half hour or so from her perspective, see if he didn’t feel like yelling, but then she stopped. Matt didn’t call people out. Unless you were a criminal, he took whatever you threw at him.

So this felt significant. She narrowed her eyes, studying him. “I was upset.”

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Yeah.”

Ugh. She took a step closer. “Did I upset you?”

“No, it’s fine.”

Predictable. “How about the truth this time,” she said softly, and held her breath.

“You were upset.”

“We can both be upset. But, Matt, it’s the same with words as it is with stitches. I need to know when I’m hurting you.”

He swallowed; she watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall. “It’s just…I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry I wasn’t clear when I told you what to expect, but I didn’t do anything wrong. Even with Frank, I was just…fighting for the city…”

Okay, maybe getting shot in the first place wasn’t his fault, and maybe he really had tried to tell her and she just hadn’t realized how _extremely_ he was downplaying, but it was his choice to let them leave a fully-equipped hospital when he knew what was about to happen, and that put her in a terrible position, and it was like he didn’t care.

But no. He cared. He might not always _understand_ , but she _knew_ he cared.

“You disagree,” he said, sounding completely resigned.

“I think…” She hesitated. “I think you made a bad call. But I don’t think it was, like, morally wrong. Does that help?”

“No.”

“What, seriously? You’re gonna put bad decisions right up there with actual, intentional sins?”

He pressed his lips together. “I don’t know.”

She was choosing to believe he was telling the truth; he really didn’t know. That didn’t mean she couldn’t wait until he figured it out.

He sighed. “I know you think I’m an idiot when it comes to my health. I get it. But I’m not going to change, so I don’t get why you’re always harping on it.”

Oh, she _harped_ , did she?

Never mind. Not the point. “Medicine is my area, Matt. How would you feel if I got myself into legal trouble and asked you for advice and then ignored it all the time?”

He frowned for a long time before he came up with: “That’s different.”

“How?”

“I wouldn’t call you stupid for disagreeing with me, for one,” he snapped.

She blinked.

“I’d assume you have your reasons and your priorities and I’d respect that.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she scoffed in disbelief. “Not if I was hurting myself.”

He worked his jaw frustratedly. “I’d… _try_ to respect you.”

She opened her mouth to argue, to say just how little she believed he’d be able to watch her martyr herself to even half the extent that he did, but then she stopped as his words sank in. “You think I don’t respect you?”

He suddenly looked like he was two seconds away from inventing some crime to go stop.

“Hey…” She caught his arm. “Matt. I respect you.”

He shrugged.

Shit. “I don’t always _agree_ , but I respect—”

“Then why are you always trying to get me to change?”

Okay. Given how many times she’d resisted the temptation to sneak him meds or drag him to the hospital when he was unconscious, that stung. She lowered her voice. “I’ve never made you do anything you don’t want to do.”

He pulled his arm free. “No, you just roll your eyes and call me an idiot.” As soon as the words were out, he looked like he wanted to take them back.

“But…” She frowned. That was what they _did_ , that was how they worked. He did stupid stuff, and she berated him for it, and he went out and did it again. Repeat ad nauseum. They both had their coping mechanisms and he was the first to admit that his were extremely unhealthy, so by comparison her biting sarcasm really never seemed that bad. “Has this…” Now she felt _awful_. “Has this always bothered you?”

Maggie had said something like that, when Claire and Foggy first brought her in. But Claire had clung to the belief that that was Maggie’s opinion, not Matt’s.

Matt chewed on his lip. She couldn’t see his hands, but she bet he was fidgeting.

“It’s okay,” she said more quietly. “You can tell me. No, you _need_ to tell me. If we’re gonna make this work, I need to know what you’re really thinking.”

She half-expected him to challenge why she wanted to make it work. “No,” he said, and her heart dropped, but then he went on, “it doesn’t usually bother me.”

“Usually?”

He half-shrugged. “Depends on the night. Depends on what you’re saying. Depends on how you’re saying it. And…depends on whether you mean it.”

She still wanted to defend herself. Point out how unfair it was for him to expect her to be totally poised and refined and not say anything she shouldn’t while she was trying to keep him from _dying_.

But he was also opening up. More than he had in…she didn’t even know. The last thing she wanted was to punish him for being honest.

“I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I’m really sorry, Matt. I never meant to hurt you.”

“You never _hurt_ me,” he insisted, because of course he would. “I just don’t like it.”

Yeah, because words weren’t supposed to hurt superheroes, right? “Look, I’ll…I’ll try to be better. Okay?”

The look in his eyes said he’d be relieved to take the olive branch she was offering, not to mention the perfect opportunity to change the subject. But he must really be exhausted, or maybe this was more important to him than even he realized, because his mouth moved again. “It’s worse right now, I think.”

She held her breath. “How?”

“Because…” His eyebrows folded together, heavy with shame, like he was admitting something horrible. “With…with these seizures, it’s not like I’ll be able to…” He flipped his hand upwards, gesturing towards the roof.

Claire blinked. “What, not at all? Not ever?” He hadn’t been on the medication for a _day_.

“I don’t know yet, do I?” He averted his gaze. “But if I can’t help people, you know, at night…then all that’s left is as a lawyer.” He wet his lips. “With my mind.”

“Matt,” she whispered. “You’re not stupid. I don’t really think that. And even if I _did_ , it’s, like, isolated stupidity. You take risks I think you shouldn’t, but that has _nothing_ to do with your skill as a lawyer!” She was rambling now, over-explaining in a desperate attempt to reassure him without conceding that she was entirely wrong to question his decisions.

“I know all that,” he said very quietly. “Doesn’t change the fact that it’s just…harder. To hear. Right now.”

Guilt wasn’t a strong enough word for what she felt. There’d be time later (she hoped) for them to talk about this when neither was caught up in too much emotion, but for now all she could do was say, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

He shook his head, because of course he did. “It’s my fault. I know you’re tired and frustrated and worried, and it’s my choices we’re having to deal with right now, so—”

“ _Hey_.” She stepped in, cutting him off before he could spiral. “Forget about all the reasons, okay? I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

His lips quirked sadly. “I’m asking too much of you, asking you to apologize when you wouldn’t even have said that if you weren’t already overwhelmed. Because of me.”

That wasn’t exactly true; calling people idiots was second nature to Claire. But that wasn’t the issue. (Or, well, maybe it was a separate issue.) “Listen to me. Like I said, I need to know when I’m hurting you. And I’m so, so glad you told me. You don’t have to minimize to make me feel better, okay? I _feel better_ just knowing you trust me enough to be honest with me.”

He was frowning. “Do you…” He hesitated. “Do you really mean that?”

“What, you can’t hear my heartbeat?” She stiffened. “Can you not hear it?”

“Uh…not yet, no.” He took a deep breath. “But I’ll…try to believe you.”

What? Matt Murdock, choosing to believe that someone actually cared about him, despite the lack of his usual evidence? Where was _this_ coming from? Surely not their one moment in the kitchen? Maybe all his walls were just getting worn down?

Well, she wasn’t complaining. He was being honest _and_ not running away from every sign that she might possibly care about him. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t going to let this moment pass.

She moved in, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips to his.

But he jerked back, and she blinked to see his eyes wide open. “Claire?”

“What?”

His eyes flitted over her face as one of his hands came up, fingers resting so soft she could barely feel them on the bruise along her jaw. His lips parted in horror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE THINGS WILL BE OKAY. They just...really, really, really have to work for it.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! It's been a while for sure, but user Angelo500 has been leaving these incredibly thoughtful comments, and it inspired me to get this next chapter up and posted! Thank you all for sticking with this fic even when my posting schedule makes zero sense!

Matt

Her skin was swollen, inflamed, and no doubt discolored, and touching the injury brought a flashing memory of fear and disorientation and striking out.

His stomach dropped as he took another step back. Maybe, _maybe_ there was another explanation, but he couldn’t think of it.

He still couldn’t quite hear her heartbeat, but her breathing got fast and shallow. “Matt, it’s okay,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know what was happening and I got too close. You didn’t mean to. And I’m barely hurt anyway.”

 _Barely_ hurt. Like that helped.

“It’s okay,” she repeated. “I’ll even say I forgive you, if that’s what you need to hear, but I don’t think you even need forgiveness.”

Of course she would say that. But how could she ask him to call her out on things when she was refusing to call him out on _this_ , the very worst thing he could do to her?

He was so stupid. Stick would never let him hear the end of it. So he’d lost his hearing, so what? It wasn’t like he’d been magically transported out of his apartment, and it wasn’t like his apartment would’ve been suddenly flooded with criminals. He should’ve known there was no danger, should’ve known the only people he could possibly hurt if he lashed out were the people he loved. Yeah, losing his hearing was…was _upsetting_ , and it brought back memories of being all alone and not knowing if he’d ever get his hearing back, and it kind of brought back memories of being in the church after Midland Circle, and those memories had plenty of unpleasant emotions to go along with them, but—but that was no excuse.

“Matt.” Claire edged closer. “You look like you’re freaking out. Please tell me you’re not freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” he said automatically.

“Okay, see, I don’t really believe you…” She pulled one of his hands out of his pockets, twining their fingers together and squeezing. “Can we go back inside?”

She was afraid he was about to bolt, he realized. Which…fair. He kind of wanted to. Get somewhere safe where he couldn’t hurt anyone no matter how confused or scared he got.

Instead, he nodded tightly. She didn’t let go of his hand as they headed back into the apartment together. He just wished this was normal. He wished they were coming back from a date night with no bleeding or broken bones or anything. He wished they didn’t have to talk about anything more serious than what she was looking forward to tomorrow.

But no. He knew what was coming next. He was going to lose his hearing again.

What he _didn’t_ know was how he was going to react. He could tell himself that of course he wouldn’t lash out again, of course he’d be able to remember where he was and who he was with, of course he wouldn’t lose control just because of memories of something that happened so long ago. But after how he’d freaked out in the MRI machine…he wasn’t so sure.

Triggers, Foggy said.

Matt wasn’t willing to claim he had something like PTSD like that nurse thought, but it felt reckless to expect to be able to stay one hundred percent in control no matter what happened. And although Matt had no problem being reckless with a lot of things, he would not— _could not_ —be reckless with Claire.

So he let Claire lead him back into the building and back up the stairs, but he stopped her in the hallway in front of his apartment door. “Claire, I—” He broke off at a sudden, heavy blow to his ribs which caused him to suck in a breath.

“Matt?” Her voice was tense.

“I’m fine,” he said quickly. “But, uh, I think I’m about to lose my hearing again.”

“It happened _twice?_ ”

He just nodded. “Round two with Castle. And I might…I might…” He winced as new pain throbbed across his shin. “I don’t know what I’ll do. So I was thinking…” For a second his own breathing sounded loud and sharp in his ears, and he couldn’t tell if he was already panicking or if that was the result of whatever was wrong with his ears. “You…you mentioned something before about tying me up?”

For a second, she was so dead silent he wondered if his hearing had already gone out again. Then she said, very slowly: “Yes?”

Whatever they did, they had to do this fast. “Is that still on the table?”

She stiffened. “I’m not tying you up if you just feel guilty about—”

“How about you tie me up because I’m asking you to?” he interrupted. Frankly, he was ready to take off and wait this out somewhere in the city if she didn’t agree, but for some reason he didn’t actually want to threaten her with that. She’d said, back when she first raised the issue, that tying him up had to be about trust. But was that only about him trusting _her_ , or could she trust _him_ to know what he was asking?

She stood still, deliberating like they had all the time in the world. “You sure it’ll help?”

“I can’t risk hurting you.”

“I told you, I’m not doing this if you feel guilty—”

“It’s not _guilt_ , it’s wanting to _protect you_.” She of all people knew what he could do with his training. “You keep insisting you’re trying to help me, but I can’t—”

He couldn’t let her do that at the cost of her own safety.

That wasn’t guilt. Was it?

He didn’t even know anymore.

Another phantom hit struck him, pain blossoming. They were running out of time. “Please, Claire, I…” He sounded too desperate; he tried to smile, turn up the charm. “Look, if my hearing’s gone, I won’t be able to hear anything you say anyway, so feel free to curse me out as much as you— _ah_.” That was a particularly brutal hit to his gut. He pitched forward, doubled over for a second before another hit popped his head back. “Claire, hurry—”

She snapped into action, pulling him into the apartment. Maggie and Foggy were in the far corner of the living room, huddled together like they’d been having a whispered conversation, but Matt was for once much too focused on what was about to happen to worry about whether they’d been talking about him.

Claire steered him towards one of the living room chairs, but he tugged her towards the table. Those chairs were too big, too soft. There was no way she’d be able to tie him in a way that would actually keep him down. The dining room chairs were less comfortable, but his comfort was the last thing on his mind.

She didn’t resist, didn’t even put up a token argument. Maybe she really did trust him with this.

“Rope’s in the closet,” he said.

She kissed his forehead, and her touch was strangely gentle when she settled him in the chair.

He’d barely sat down when pain exploded through his head, his back. He lurched forward as blood burst in his mouth, bracing himself with a forearm against the table. He remembered this. Frank, throwing him through a glass ceiling. His suit had protected him from most of the shards, and the tiny cuts now scattered across his back were nothing compared to what came next. To what was _happening_.

“—att?” That was Foggy’s voice, blinking in and out of existence.

Ringing filled Matt’s ears. Footsteps came close. It was probably Claire. It _wasn’t_ Frank Castle—Frank Castle was gone, he was from the past. Matt gripped the underside of the chair, fighting every instinct to lash out, fighting the animalistic part of his brain screaming that every unknown was a threat.

Hands ran down one of his arms. Smaller hands, worn from healing. Claire. She was close enough that her scent overwhelmed everything else, overrode some of his instincts, soothed his surging adrenaline.

Maggie was saying something, voice sharp. He couldn’t make out the words.

Closing his eyes, he focused on the sensations. Rope snaking between his wrists, securing his hands together behind his back. She tapped on his shoulders. “—hurt?”

The tendons were a little strained, but he shook his head. She needed to hurry. His body wanted to fight, so she needed to hurry.

She moved on to his legs, swiftly tying them together at his ankles and knees. Then she moved up, drawing the rope around his chest and abdomen. He felt her breath but couldn’t hear her voice. Couldn’t hear anything, not even his own heartbeat. He could feel it, though. Throbbing fast in his skull, beating wildly in his chest, thudding against the tightness of the ropes. And breathing, breathing was harder than it should be.

What if this was a mistake, what if he needed to protect them, what if he hurt her anyway, what if his hearing never came back, _whatifwhatif_.

Ropes around his upper arms, holding him with his back flat against the back of the chair. Matt tried to breathe deeply. Still couldn’t manage it. Still wasn’t the rope’s fault.

This was a mistake. His apartment wasn’t safe. It’d been no problem for Elektra and that young Hand ninja to break into his apartment, and now he was leaving the people he loved most completely defenseless—

Claire’s fingers skittered through his hair. He focused on her touch for as long as he could. His mouth moved around her name.

A second later, something struck him hard on the temple and everything vanished.

Maggie

She was so out of her depth.

Her son was sitting on one of his kitchen chairs, tied up, passed out, and bleeding sluggishly on his back and from his temple. It was no shock to her that he was continually injured—the myriad scars crisscrossing his body informed her of _that_ the instant she cut away his red suit. But actually watching it all happen in real time? This was something else.

And how terrible was it to find some sense of peace in the fact that he was finally unconscious.

A quick glance around the room, however, indicated that she was not alone. Claire dabbed at some of his new cuts, then sat back on her knees with a long sigh while Foggy rolled his head back on his neck, staring up at the ceiling. Everyone was breathing heavily.

“So did he find out he hit you?” Foggy asked suddenly, apparently talking to the ceiling.

Claire sighed again. “That’s why he asked me to…” She gestured.

Maggie stared at her son again. When Claire first started tying him up, she’d tried to argue. Surely restraining Matthew was the last thing he needed, surely it would only add to his guilt, to his persistent feeling that he was a danger to those around him. But apparently _he_ had been the one to request it.

That couldn’t be healthy.

Could it?

Maggie was so out of her depth.

“Huh,” Foggy said. “I think he forgot he hit me at the hospital.”

“He did?” Claire’s eyes roved over Foggy’s face, as did Maggie’s, but he wasn’t visibly injured.

Foggy shrugged. “Wasn’t a great hit. He was kinda flailing.”

“Don’t tell him,” Claire said immediately.

Foggy’s eyebrows raised. “Between me and him, I’m usually not the one fibbing.”

“Don’t tell him _yet_.”

Maggie opened her mouth to join the argument, to take Claire’s side. But really, who was she to give her opinion on any of this? She closed her mouth again.

Claire, meanwhile, pressed two fingers against Matthew’s throat. “He’s still out. Anyone have any idea how long this one’s supposed to last?”

Foggy was the only one who could possibly know, but he shook his head.

“Great,” Claire said darkly. “Well, we may as well make the most of it if he really can’t hear us. Anyone got any thoughts on how to handle the whole seizure thing? Because I am…” Her voice cracked; she quickly stared at the floor. “I am scared _shitless_.”

It was clear in her voice, in her face. Maggie was familiar enough with her own fear to recognize it in others.

“Um,” Foggy said, slipping his hands into his pockets and looking up at the ceiling again. “Yeah, no. No idea.”

“Great,” Claire repeated. Her hand was still on Matthew’s neck. “When we talked outside, he at least seemed to recognize that he might not be able to keep…Daredeviling.”

Foggy let out a long breath. Of frustration or worry, Maggie thought at first, only to realize a second later that it was actually of _relief_. “Finally.”

Maggie frowned.

“I mean,” Foggy went on, “I’m not pretending it won’t be really hard on him, but…it’s not like it didn’t have to happen eventually. Better this way than getting _actually_ shot in the head or something.”

Claire wasn’t disagreeing.

Maggie should keep her opinions to herself. She really, really should.

But neither Foggy nor Claire were there in Clinton Church’s basement.

She took a step forward. “This may be worse.”

“Uh, excuse me?” Foggy stared at her.

“He needs Daredevil,” Maggie said slowly, already half-wishing she could take the words back. “He needs to know that he’s helping people.”

“He can do that with the law!”

She shook her head. “The law will never be good enough for him.”

Foggy’s eyes narrowed. “I know. He and I have had this conversation about a thousand times.”

“Then why aren’t you listening?”

“You seriously want him running around in a devil suit with epilepsy?”

Maggie gritted her teeth. “I want him to be _himself_.”

“Yeah, and I want him to live past fifty!”

“Foggy,” Claire said suddenly, quietly.

His head snapped around towards her. “What?”

“His hearing will come back.”

Now Foggy looked confused. “What?”

“What?” Maggie repeated.

Claire pressed her lips together. “His hearing will come back. He can’t be Daredevil, but he can’t stop hearing the city, either. All the cries for help he won’t be able to answer.”

“We’ll…I don’t know…” Foggy threw his hands up. “Get him earplugs?”

Claire seemed to curl in on herself a little. “And what about the people he’s protecting?”

“I…” Foggy trailed off.

“I’m just saying.” Claire pulled her hand from Matthew’s neck to wrap both arms around herself, looking torn. “I was one of them.”

Maggie looked at Claire in a new light.

“Okay,” Foggy said, obviously frustrated, “but he can’t—”

Claire cut him off. “I _know_ he can’t keep being Daredevil. But I don’t know what’ll happen if he has to listen to screams and sirens every night and not be able to help.”

Maggie opened her mouth again. She should tell them about Matthew losing that boxing match, realizing his hearing was too unreliable, and deciding to go out anyway. Clinging to Daredevil, preferring to _die_ than give it up. She should tell them.

But…it wasn’t her story to tell. It was Matthew’s. And if his response to the nurse at the hospital was any indication, he hadn’t told his best friend or his girlfriend that he’d tried to kill himself. Or, at the very least, not bothered to stop someone else from trying to kill him.

What if she told his friends, and he never forgave her?

What if she told his friends, and they turned around and used that knowledge to hurt him? Maggie knew Claire and Foggy well enough over these last few hours that she was certain they wouldn’t hurt him on _purpose_ , but she _didn’t_ know them well enough to be certain they wouldn’t hurt him accidentally.

In fact, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Claire and Foggy were all too capable of accidentally hurting him.

Maggie closed her mouth again, wondering if she was being wise or a coward.

“It’s fine,” Foggy was saying. “This just requires…creative problem-solving. We could, uh…” He scrunched up his face, apparently thinking hard and fast. “We could have him listen up on the roof with Jessica Jones on standby to go deal with whatever he hears.”

Claire snorted. “Jessica would never agree to that.”

Foggy scowled. “I don’t see you coming up with any ideas.”

“He could get a seizure alert dog?”

“No good. I’ve been trying to get him to get a dog for years.”

Maggie spoke up again despite herself. “Whoever made his suit, they could make him something more protective.”

Claire and Foggy turned in unison to look at her.

Maggie hunched her shoulders defensively. “We can’t stop him going out. So we might as well—”

“We won’t have to,” Claire interrupted flatly. “He said he knows he can’t keep doing this. Which means we have to focus on—”

“He can’t not do it,” Maggie countered just as flatly. “And if he convinces himself otherwise, it’ll be our job to change his mind.”

Foggy’s eyes widened. “You want us…to actively encourage him…to be Daredevil? _Still?_ I mean, look, I was all for Matt saving the city, but that was _before_ he got epilepsy!”

Maggie wasn’t so sure Foggy was as supportive as he apparently thought he was, and she couldn’t back down now. “It just requires creative problem-solving.”

“No offense,” Claire said, voice brittle, “but I don’t think you get the danger here.”

Maybe Maggie should tell them. After all, they’d see for themselves in just a few hours, right? But she couldn’t bring herself to make a decision.

Foggy walked across the room to stand closer to Matthew. Whether he meant it or not, he was positioning himself between Maggie and her son. “No offense,” he echoed Claire, “but neither of you were there after the whole…” He made a face. “Ninja thing. He stopped being Daredevil. For, like, a _long_ time. And he did okay. I mean…kind of.”

Maggie didn’t believe him for a second. But, by her own fault, she didn’t know enough to argue.

Claire, however, did. “He willingly stayed under a collapsing building, Foggy.”

Foggy stared at her in disbelief. “Because he _put on the suit again_ , not because he stopped wearing it first!”

“How do you know?” Claire shot back. “How do _any_ of us know? I mean…” She bit her lip. “We’re standing here trying to figure out what’s best for him, but we haven’t even asked him.”

Some of the tension in Maggie’s chest lightened at those words.

But Foggy snorted. “You ask him what he wants, and he just says all the things he doesn’t want. He doesn’t want us worrying, he doesn’t want pain meds, he doesn’t want people getting hurt, he doesn’t want to stop. Not exactly helpful.”

Claire looked from Matthew to Foggy and back again. “You’re right. Asking what he wants will just start an argument.” She drummed her fingers on her knees. “But it’s like…we all know a different version of him. And there’ve gotta be versions of him none of us know. But somehow, all those different versions have to fit together. If we could figure out how, or if he could explain it…”

“I wish,” Foggy muttered. “He once said he’s an endless contradiction that’d never stand up to cross-examination.”

“Maybe he is,” Claire said, eyes drifting across Matthew’s face. “But maybe we should ask him anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The contradiction-and-cross-examination quote is one of my fave quotes from the comics.


End file.
